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More "Jerky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... man waved aside their thanks and drew up the one chair in the room, talking all the time in his quick, jerky fashion. ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... acceptance he brought the music for me to try over with him the next morning. The soiree was to be three days later. The music is nothing remarkable; in fact, the whole thing (it is called "The Prodigal Son") is not worthy of him. I have not met any of my fellow- performers yet. Forgive this jerky letter; I have been interrupted a thousand times. Charles thinks it is time to go back to Paris; but we have just received an invitation from Baron Alfred Rothschild to spend Ascot week—a sejour de sept jours—with a party at a house ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... present—the favoured lover. He sat with Alice near the piano where Francie and her governess were playing duets, listening without listening to his companion's jerky talk—those pathetic attempts to attract him which so many second-rate girls were not too proud to make obvious to his keen apprehension. Claud Dalzell's distinction was that he was the most polished young man of his social ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... But then every one shouted across blocks, and besides, every one knew that Afternoon Tea Willie just dearly loved to be yelled at. He whirled about now, waved his hat, and came hurrying back, with the peculiar jerky irregular motion of his feet, that always ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... looked at him kind of funny. I knew then he'd been celebrating the night before, and I was right glad he hadn't begun to celebrate until he'd drove us home, for he was jerky yet. ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough
... air of tense, long waiting. Little is said, and then spoken in quick and jerky tempo, ...
— Class of '29 • Orrie Lashin and Milo Hastings
... around the falls without our knowing it. Hung about here, waiting to steal something from our camp. Had a snare set for jack-rabbits. Saw some torn skins in the camp," was what the cowboy replied, in his jerky way. ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... of the French Camp, How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, and the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and are therefore familiar with Browning's custom of leaving out words, using odd, informal words which another man might think out of place in poetry, and employing strange, sometimes jerky, meters. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... had already climbed upon a low projection in the wall of one of the houses opposite. From this point of vantage he could more easily observe what went on inside the cabaret, and in short, jerky sentences he gave a description of what he ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... done. They couldn't go on like this.... Her mind went to and fro, quickly, with short jerky movements, distressed; it had to do so much thinking in ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... In a jerky, strained voice he told of his mailing a letter, from a village within a short distance of Bug Hollow, to a girl friend of his on the afternoon of the night of the robbery. He swore positively that ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... about wi' song in his heart an' another on his lips; an' one day he fetched up inside a faery rath. The pipers were pipin' an' the Wee People was dancin', an' while they was dancin' they was singin' like this: 'Monday an' Tuesday—an' Monday an' Tuesday—an' Monday an' Tuesday'—an' it sounded all jerky and bad. 'That's a terrible poor song,' says the humpy, speakin' out plain. 'What's that?' says the faeries, stoppin' their dance an' gatherin' round him. ''Tis mortal poor music ye are making' ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... little rouged; and they communicated in a nasal argot, mainly insolences and elisions. Nay, the common speech of the people showed change: in place of the old midland vernacular, irregular but clean, and not unwholesomely drawling, a jerky dialect of coined metaphors began to be heard, held together by GUNNAS and GOTTAS and much fostered ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... Kronborg was a fine-looking woman. She was short and square, but her head was a real head, not a mere jerky termination of the body. It had some individuality apart from hats and hairpins. Her hair, Moonstone women admitted, would have been very pretty "on anybody else." Frizzy bangs were worn then, ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... a jerky movement, as if pulling himself together. He put an unsteady hand into his breast-pocket. "It came this afternoon, my lady, about an hour ago. I am afraid it's bad news—very bad news. Yes, my lady, I'm telling you, I'm ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... Harmand (de la Meuse): "Anecdotes relatives a la Revolution." "He was dressed like a tough cab-driver. He had a disturbed look and an eye always in motion; he acted in an abrupt, quick and jerky way. A constant restlessness gave a convulsive contraction to his muscles and features which likewise affected his manner of walking so that he ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... impossible, Hamilton," I cried, when in short jerky sentences, as if afraid to give thought rein, he had answered my uncle's ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... rather vulgar-looking man. At a distance—say ten yards—his height, figure, and carriage gave him somewhat of a commanding appearance, but this was rather marred by a jerky, twitchy, uneasy sort of air, that too plainly showed he was not the natural, or what the lower orders call the real gentleman. Not that Sponge was shy. Far from it. He never hesitated about offering to a lady ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... sentiment, was Rationalism pure and simple. Its god was not the creator of the visible universe, of angels and archangels, dominions, principalities, and powers, of incalculable natural and supernatural forces, but a jerky loose-jointed pasteboard divinity, the exclusive possession, since it is the exclusive invention, of the Anglo-Saxon race, through whose gaping mouth any and every self- elected prophet was free to shout, as heaven-descended truth, in the name of progress and liberty, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... in a little bare room with the floor covered with straw. Two telegraph operators are making that infernal jerky clicking sound I have begun so to hate. Half a dozen men of the signal staff are lying about the floor looking at week-old papers. In the next room I can hear the general, seated at a table and intent on his map, talking to an ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... effectually concealed behind a blinding veil of rhetoric. When he has leisure to adorn, he translates the simplest, most obvious reflections into the "jargon" of political philosophy, but, driven impetuously forward by the excitement of his theme, he throws off jerky, spasmodic sentences containing but a single clause. His style is a curious ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... of the crisply-curling forelock being soaped, rolled and brushed up into that approved tonsorial ornament known in barrack-room parlance as a "quiff." His complexion was of that peculiar olive-brown shade especially noticeable in most Anglo-Indians. In his smart, soldierly aspect, biting, jerky Cockney speech and clipped, wax-pointed moustache he betrayed ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... sigh of relief, flashed across the room on tiptoe, and went down on his knees beside the monstrous thing, moving the candle this way and that along the length of it, as if searching for something, and laughing in little jerky gasps of relief when he found nothing that was not as it had been—as it should be—as he wanted it to be. And then, as he rose and patted the clay, and laughed aloud as he realized how hard it had set, then, at that instant, a white shape ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... with a crank, but had grown so rusty that every now and then a wheel would catch on a cog. He did not stand still for a moment, but kept continually stepping, stepping, without advancing or retreating, striking his heavy cane on the ground at each step, as if beating time to his jerky syllables. He had twinkling blue eyes, which were half hid under heavy, projecting eyebrows, and shut up tight whenever he laughed. His hair was long and thin, and white as spun glass. Altogether, except that he spoke ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... a new, strange, jerky fluttering of wings far softer than the grouse's, and George and Jane cried out together: "Oh, do mind your wings in ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... is milord!" he said, in jerky English, and bowed punctiliously though he was still shaking with rage. "What can I do for ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... years ago," he said, speaking in a jerky voice so as not to interfere with the comfort of his pipe, "since I had a fowl for dinner— and I mind very well when it was. It was my wedding-day. Away up in the north it was, and ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... chuckle, a man's "Whew!" of surprise, the "Hem!" of annoyance or perplexity, the moan of pain, a scream, a whisper, a rasp, a sob, a choke, and a gasp. The utterances of animals, though wordless, are eloquent to me—the cat's purr, its mew, its angry, jerky, scolding spit; the dog's bow-wow of warning or of joyous welcome, its yelp of despair, and its contented snore; the cow's moo; a monkey's chatter; the snort of a horse; the lion's roar, and the terrible snarl of the tiger. Perhaps ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... works and wrote a good deal of church music. Some of his religious works were really beautiful, but he had strange obsessions. Berlioz greatly admired his master and could not help showing, especially in his earlier works, traces of this admiration. That is the reason for the syncopated and jerky passages without rhyme or reason and which can only be explained by his unconscious imitation of Leuseur's faults. In imitating a model the resemblances occur in the faults and not in the excellences, for the latter are inimitable. ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... London has agreed with you," rumbled Selwyn discontentedly. "Your pulse is as jerky as a primitive cinema film. You'd better not be in such a hurry to run away from us again. Besides, we can't do ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... my little friend most woefully lacked was repose. Not only were her motions jerky and exasperating in the extreme, but during my whole acquaintance with her I never saw her for a moment absolutely still. On the rare occasions when her body was at rest, her head turned from side to side as though moved by machinery, like the mandarin dolls of the toy-shops, and I had doubts whether ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... able to eat nothing during the preceding day. I lay there half asleep, half awake, for, I suppose, a long time, hearing the window rattle sometimes when the cannon was noisy and feeling under the jerky reflections on the wall as though I were in an old shambling cab driving along a dark road, I thought a good deal about that talk with Semyonov that I had. What a strange man! But then I do not understand him at all. I don't think I understand any Russian, ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... led in Form I and now stood sideways on, so as to keep his charge under constant survey. Even in that moment of acute despair he arrested Robert's attention. There was something odd about him—something distressful and indignant. Whilst he prayed he made jerky, irritable movements which fluttered out the wings of his gown, so that with his sleek black hair and pointed face he looked like a large angry blackbird, trapped ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... performing. Of course these tirades often failed of immediate effect, but at least no effort was made to put an effective check on the writer's career. Read a century later in a cold and critical light, Bonaparte's proclamations of the same period seem stilted, jerky, and theatrical. In them, however, there may still be found a sort of interstitial sentimentality, and in an age of romantic devotion to ideals the quality of vague suggestiveness passed for genuine coin. Whatever else was lacking in those compositions, they had the one supreme merit of accomplishing ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... jerky movement of the head, which set in motion the little rings of hair, now growing so fast, and brought his brother to ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... fence. It was while she was so looking that the car behind shot suddenly past and ahead, and she saw its tail lights moving away with a pang of hopelessness. Then, before she realised what had happened, the big car ahead slowed and swung sideways, blocking the road, and the cab came to a jerky stop that flung her against the window. She saw two figures in the dim light of the taxi's head lamps, heard somebody speak, and ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... also dressed like a doll. The boy looked very handsome, in a black velvet suit with lace ruffles at the wrists and knees, and long white stockings with black slippers. He was clever, too, in assuming the character, and walked with stiff, jerky strides, like a mechanical doll that had just been ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... the hand that still fumbled at his mustache, and walked away with the jerky, jaunty gait of the old man who still affects youth, and Lady Luce composed her lovely face into a look ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... periods with a highbred dignity which Nature had clearly not assumed. Another broke away from the harsh notes around in soft diapasons, and with a mellifluous soprano which I instinctively knew must belong to a throat that could sing. Was it Nilsson? Just over my head was a jerky croak of a snore, sounding at intervals of half a minute, as if it had retired on half-pay and longed to get back into ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... the virtues of stuffed crocodiles, but convinced at last that this was no trap, but a genuine situation from which he could profit, his greed overcame his native caution, and through the aid of his jerky English and Billy's jagged Arabic a certain measure of confidence ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... of bands of Carlylites at Oxford and elsewhere might have been justified in describing the imperative duty of work as the theme of many an hour of strenuous idleness, and the superiority of golden silence over silver speech as the text of endless bursts of jerky rapture, while a too constant invective against cant had its usual effect of developing cant with a difference. To the incorrigibly sentimental all this was sheer poison, which continues tenaciously in the system. ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... begins at the expiration of its predecessor. The connection and relation of the sub-incidents is not always as close as this. In a longer story they could be more distinct and definite and yet preserve the unity of the work; but they should never disintegrate into minor climaxes,[37] nor into such a jerky succession of ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... covered with leather; and the old servant got in beside her, wrapped her up with a big cloak, and holding an umbrella over her head, cried: "Quick, Denis, let us be off." The young man climbed up beside his mother and whipped up the horse, whose jerky pace made the two women bounce ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... "ye know nothin' of love, Mister Bobo, an' ye never will. I'm sorry for ye, too. Life without love is like eatin' bull-beef jerky without salsa!" ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... the little table made a group from which, while he ate, he could not withdraw his eyes. The suffering passivity of the woman, the sly, sinister humor in Tom Mowbray's heavy, grey face, the livid and impotent hate that frothed in the crippled man, and his strange jerky gestures, the atmosphere of nightmare cruelty and suffering that enveloped them like a miasma these bit themselves into his imagination and left it sore. He saw and tasted nothing of what he ate and drank; he was lost in watching the three at the other table; the man who refilled his cup ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... oscillates, advances, recoils, first in one direction, then in another, until in the end the little hillock of sand is crossed. Now we are free of the brick and on excellent soil. Little by little the load advances. This is no cartage by a team hauling in the open, but a jerky displacement, the work of invisible levers. The body seems to move of its ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... were all said in a jerky way in the midst of plenty of cutting and foining; for, though the Frenchmen did not attempt to pass the doorway, they kept on making fierce thrusts at us, ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... ledge above the road, sheltering from the wind. I do not know whether they meant to be as humorous as they were, but I can hardly think they were not amused at each other. They stood and lay very close together, with fierce glances, and quick, jerky motions of the head. Now and then one, tired of inaction, raised a deliberate claw, bowed its head, scratched with incredible rapidity, shook its tumbled feathers, and looked round with angry self-consciousness, as though to say: "I will ask any one to think me absurd at his peril." Now ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... stage there is great pain aggravated by movement, and the animal is usually stiff as though foundered, the pulse is quick and hard, the breathing abdominal, the chest being fixed so far as possible, the inspiration short and jerky, the expiration longer. The pain is caused by the friction of the dry, inflamed pleural surfaces of the lung and chest on each other. At this stage the ear detects a dry friction murmur, resembling somewhat the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... at this mark of confidence, but he merely gave one of his jerky little nods and walked along solemnly beside his brilliant associate. In his loyalty for M. Paul this tough old veteran would have allowed himself to be cut into small pieces, but he would have spluttered and grumbled throughout ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... deep in her paper, paid no attention. Few people would have taken her for the sister of the financier. She was his exact opposite in almost every way. He was small, jerky and aggressive; she, tall, deliberate and negative. She was one of those women whom nature seems to have produced with the object of attaching them to some man in a peculiar position of independent dependence, and who defy ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... occurred to mar the even life of the young adventurers left behind. This was the tenor of the message, but there was something about it that worried Frank. Lathrop, he knew, was an expert wireless operator, but the sending that he performed that morning was so jerky and irregular that the rankest ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... energy he could into a series of short jerky strokes, using the muscles of his arms, failing altogether to get the weight of his body on the oar. At the end of twenty minutes Priscilla ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... the birds he knows. There can be but one reason for this; the bird is inconspicuous. The olive-green of its back, with its light under parts, serves to hide it completely amid the foliage. Even the bird-lover learns to find it first by its jerky song, and then by watching for ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... feet, uttering low, jerky barks. Dot put aside her saucepan and began to wash her hands. She did not hasten to obey Jack's call, but when she turned to collect glasses on a tray she was trembling and her breath came quickly, as ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... an imploring hand on Flora Clark's arm when she manifested symptoms of rising and interrupting the reading. Flora was getting angry—I knew by the way her forehead was knitted and by the jerky way she sewed. Poor Harriet Jameson looked more and more distressed. I was sure she saw Mrs. White holding back Flora, and knew just what it meant. Harriet was sitting quite idle with her little hands in her lap; we had set her to hemming a ruffle for the missionary's wife's dress, but ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... it was not allowed to use "outrigged" boats (so called because they are so narrow that the oars cannot work on the gunwale, but are rigged out on iron frames). Moreover, they rowed in a broad, heavy, clumsy-looking craft, with common oars like those used at sea, and they pulled a short jerky stroke, and had to go round a winding French course—indeed with apparently every disadvantage; yet they came in first, beating English and French, and ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... suddenness of it all. This is Brown—Harry Brown—the nightman at the mine down here. We've got the ambulance here and we're about ready to start." There was an evenness about the strange voice that she understood better than its words. If Bill had been hurt the man would have been quick and jerky in his speaking as though he were feeling the boy's pain with him; but he was so even about it all—as ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... of the House of Commons, or the more privileged seats "under the Gallery," from my days of knickerbockers, I often heard Palmerston speak. I remember his abrupt, jerky, rather "bow-wow"-like style, full of "hums" and "hahs"; and the sort of good-tempered but unyielding banter with which he fobbed off an inconvenient enquiry, or repressed the simple-minded ardour of a ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... out a bit of dried beef, the "jerky" of the southwest. He held it out arm's length, sending his horse racing forward with a sudden touch of his spur. The big dog barked eagerly and launched his sinewy body into the air; the sunlight flashed back a moment from the bared sharp teeth; Monarch dropped softly back to earth with the dried ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... their old nervous habit, and the answer came in an odd, jerky, half-connected way: "I dunnot know why it should ha' done. I mun be mad, or summat. I nivver had no hope nor nothin': theer nivver wur no reason why I should ha' had. Ay, I mun be wrong somehow, or it wouldna ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Silas Foster plied his rake manfully, poking it as far as he could into the water, and immersing the whole length of his arm besides. Hollingsworth at first sat motionless, with the hooked pole elevated in the air. But, by and by, with a nervous and jerky movement, he began to plunge it into the blackness that upbore us, setting his teeth, and making precisely such thrusts, methought, as if he were stabbing at a deadly enemy. I bent over the side of the ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the description. A middle-aged lady with a brown skin, black hair and dark eyes, an oval face, fairly good-looking, her manner lively and attractive, her movements quick without being abrupt or jerky. She was highly intelligent and a good talker, with more to say than most women, and better able than most to express herself. We were at the same small table and got on well together, as I am a good listener and she knew— being a woman, how should she not?—that ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... You read blunt, jerky sentences that told you Mark had died suddenly, in the mess room, of heart failure. Captain Symonds said he thought you would want to know exactly how it happened.... "Well, we were 'cock-fighting,' if you know what that is, after dinner. Peters is the heaviest man in our battery, ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... out onto a crude back porch, built entirely of aspen poles. The floor was of pine boards, and had once been a marvel of beauty and convenience for a mountain cabin; but time had played strange pranks with it, till now it was uneven and sloped off in a jerky fashion toward the back door. On one wall was fastened a rude set of shelves, on which was perched a motley collection of pickle bottles and tin cans. Stretched along one wall stood a crude, home-made table, and in one corner stood ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... They had gone but a few hundred yards; yet the fire was already merely a shapeless, red smudge on the foggy blackness behind them. Horace Greeley pounded along at a jog, and when the Captain slapped him with the end of the reins, broke into a jerky gallop that was slower ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... sandy-complexioned man, with a straggling beard and light blue eyes. He appeared competent enough, a bundle of nervous energy, and yet there was something about the fellow which instantly impressed me unfavorably—probably his short, jerky manner of speech, and his inability to look ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... von Aurnhammer's after dinner nearly every day. The young woman is a fright, but she plays ravishingly, though she lacks the true singing style in the cantabile; she is too jerky." ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... was all very dream-like and strange: the awful, overwhelming, crushing sound of the wind seemed to press upon my brain so that I could not for a long time think, only lie and try to breathe without catching each inspiration in a jerky, spasmodic way. ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... strokes. Her method was a bit jerky, perhaps, and lacked grace; but she was going straight down the stretch to the "home" stake, and before they had covered half the distance Nancy passed ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... break up that complex thought into its elements, it just comes to this, first, that trust makes steadfastness. Most men's lives are blown about by winds of circumstance, directed by gusts of passion, shaped by accidents, and are fragmentary and jerky, like some ship at sea with nobody at the helm, heading here and there, as the force of the wind or the flow of the current may carry them. If my life is to be steadied, there must not only be a strong hand at the tiller, but ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... we used to have on the moor, when we were boys;" and directly after, sounding distant and strange, and as if it could not possibly have been given by his companion, there rang out a peculiar low piping whistle, followed by a short jerky note or two. ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... discriminatively the movement he makes. There are many kinds of nods. The quick, sharp tipping of the head indicates unhesitating, clean-cut decisions. Such judgments on the spur of the moment are not always right, but they are apt to be pretty conclusive. Irregular, jerky nods are signs of irritability, of rash or very impulsive decisions, and often of unreasoning prejudice. The nod made directly forward signifies frankness, dignity, and straight thinking. The tilting of the head a little to one side suggests a habit of indirectness ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... driving a superb team: four yoke of young beasts, black-coated with tawny spots that gleamed like fire, with the short, curly heads that suggest the wild bull, the great, wild eyes, the abrupt movements, the nervous, jerky way of doing their work, which shows that the yoke and goad still irritate them and that they shiver with wrath as they yield to the domination newly imposed upon them. They were what are called oxen freshly yoked. ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... unable to forget it, especially when Charlie's adventures in the Green River under-world cheated it of exercise too long, was remembering it now, and bolting down the hilly little street, settled at last into a jerky and tentative gait with the air of accepting their guidance until it could arrange further plans, but ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... Certainly yes, when the feeling of the speaker behind the phrase makes him enforce his meaning by a suitable movement. In speaking today fewer gestures are indulged in than years ago. There should never be many. Senseless, jerky, agitated pokings and twitchings should be eradicated completely. Insincere flourishes should be inhibited. Beginners should beware of gestures until they become such practised masters of their minds and bodies that physical emphasis may be ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... room, sometimes excitedly, his mind engrossed with his subject, until he has composed an entire paragraph, when he sits down and writes it, never retouching, nor composing sentence by sentence, which he thinks has a tendency to give an abrupt and jerky effect to what is written. Traces of this, he thinks, may be found in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... wild as the breeze— It wandered about into several keys; It was jerky, spasmodic, and harsh, I'm aware, But still it distinctly ...
— The Best Nonsense Verses • Various
... steamer. The men at the rear would join in with wild shouts like those made by American cowboys, most of them rising in their prahus to be able to give more impetus to the paddles. The powerful strokes of our enthusiastic crew made my prahu jump with jerky movements, and we progressed rapidly, arriving early in the afternoon at Tandjong Selor. This time I was made comfortable in a government's pasang-grahan that had just been completed, and which was far enough from the main street ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... fixed upon him, watching for the least word, the least modulation of the voice. The curiosity-dealer was now laughing, with a nervous laugh, while resuming the self-control of a man who feels sure of himself: and he walked up to Renine with jerky movements ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... herself satisfactorily to the pondering one beside her growing more apparent at each syllable. "You remember that trying case of conscience I told you of some time ago—about the first lover and the second lover?" She let out in jerky phrases a leading word or two of the story she ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... and ask the operator to get it in the hands of the chief of police without an instant's loss of time," directed Mr. Seaton, speaking in jerky haste. ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... Jacobs's bunk. Some time before, he had rigged up a pair of curtains, cut out of an old sack, to keep off the draught. These, some one had drawn, so that I had to pull them aside to see him. He was lying on his back, breathing in a queer, jerky fashion. I could not see his face, plainly; but it seemed rather pale, in ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson
... made King feel homesick, for out of the mountain's very womb brayed a music-box, such as the old-time carousels made use of before the days of electricity and steam. It was being worked by inexpert hands, for the time was something jerky; but it was robbed of its tinny meanness and even majesty by the hugeness of a cavern's roof, as well as by the crashing, swinging march it played— wild -wonderful—invented for lawless hours and ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... exactly know what she wished. She was fretted at the poor show a King's man had made before a Puritan; if Sir Blaise could do something to humble the Puritan it might not be wholly amiss. So much Halfman gathered from her jerky scraps of sentences; also, that on no account must the disputants be permitted to come to swords. Halfman nodded, caught up a staff, and ran full tilt to the pleasaunce. The moment his back was turned Brilliana, instead of remaining in the house, came out again, doubled on her course, ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... tucked themselves in a corner from which through a hole where the tiles had fallen off the roof, they could see down into the barnyard, where white and speckled chickens pecked about with jerky movements. A middle-aged woman stood in the doorway of the house looking suspiciously at the files of khaki-clad soldiers that shuffled slowly into the ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... Stiffly, she put Baby Newcomb back into his basket. As she did so, a ripple of shrill, jerky laughter crackled through the room. Lorry put her hands to her ears. "You know I can't say anything. You'd keep quiet. They'd call ...
— I'll Kill You Tomorrow • Helen Huber
... frozen in their position above his head. He turned slowly, with little jerky movements, as though he had to fight to make himself look. And then ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... of the reader. They adopt as their motto multum in parvo (much in little) and endeavor to pack a great deal in small space. Of course the extreme of brevity is to be avoided. Sentences can be too short, too jerky, too brittle to withstand the test of criticism. The long sentence has its place and a very important one. It is indispensable in argument and often is very necessary to description and also in introducing general ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... true that a law was passed in 1850 to provide for the sanitary supervision of this class of property; but in Paris the law is a dead letter, and, although it is now active in the provinces and in places like Marseilles, Lyons, Bordeaux, and Nantes, it is applied, even there, in a jerky and intermittent manner. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... the face and floundered, amid his jerky sentences, like a newly-landed fish, but he stuck to it manfully. I could not help admiring the young fellow. He was so young and handsome and so honest and boyishly eager in his embarrassment. I admired him—yes, but I hated him, ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... humor in his eyes. It was hot, swelteringly hot, in that packet of sand with the unclouded sun almost straight overhead. He could have tossed a pebble to where a bright-eyed sandpiper was cocking itself backward and forward, its jerky movements accompanied by friendly little tittering noises. Everything about him seemed friendly. The river rippled and murmured in cooling song just beyond the sandpiper. On the other side the still cooler forest was a paradise of shade and contentment, astir with subdued and hidden life. ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... characteristic habit of phrase making and became more jerky and real. "I respected you, Alice," he went on. "I didn't love you but I hoped I might, and I played the game. I liked to see you in my house. You fitted in and made it more of a home than that barrack had ever been. I ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... funeral they returned to the cottage and had a repast of Julia's providing, eminently suitable to the occasion. Everything was eminently suitable, every one's behaviour, every one's clothes; Mr. Frazer's grave face, the banker's jerky manner—the manner of a man concerned with the world's money market and ill at ease in the intrusive presence of death. Mrs. Polkington's voice, face, feelings, sayings, everything. Julia's own behaviour was perfect, though all the time she saw how it looked as plainly ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... likely to succeed. Your confidence oozes away, you fill steadily up with nameless apprehensions, every fiber of you is tense with a watchful strain, you start a cautious and gradual curve, but your squirmy nerves are all full of electric anxieties, so the curve is quickly demoralized into a jerky and perilous zigzag; then suddenly the nickel-clad horse takes the bit in its mouth and goes slanting for the curbstone, defying all prayers and all your powers to change its mind—your heart stands still, your breath hangs fire, your legs forget to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... mind on them to the exclusion of everything else, but do not be surprised if, when, later on, you want to communicate a semblance of life to your mechanical motions, you succeed in obtaining no more than the jerky movements ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... the man in sharp, jerky sentences, each one definite and pointed. She spoke with the certainty of conviction. ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... Tillott has not his persuasive powers!" she thought; Mr. Tillott's eloquence being, in fact, of a very limited order, chiefly exhibiting itself in little jerky questions about the spiritual and temporal welfare of his humble parishioners—questions which, in the vernacular language of agricultural labourers, "put a ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... that Bud was not responding very well, his feeble strokes were jerky and uncoordinated. "Must've lost pressure too fast when his ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... their moments of depression. R. Jones' face clouded, and jerky remarks about hardness of times and losses on the Stock Exchange began to proceed from him. As Scotland Yard had discovered, he lent money on occasion; but he did not lend it to youths in Freddie's ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... along; what strange, twisted and jerky movements they have; what sufferings they must endure, and what pain they must have had. All these thoughts come to us as we look at the march of the disabled as they twist and writhe ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... Here, I felt instinctively, were the "new" woman and the "new" man, if there are such things. I wondered just how they would hit it off together. For the moment, at least, Clare Kendall was an absorbing study, as she greeted us with a frank, jerky straight-arm handshake. ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... knew by sight or by name, and not one of whom he had ever met before. But they all shook hands after it was over, and the assistant organist played the Wedding March, and one of the club men insisted in pulling a cheerful and jerky peal on the church bell in the absence of the janitor, and then Van Bibber hurled an old shoe and a handful of rice—which he had thoughtfully collected from the chef at the club—after them as they drove ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... laid up Chauvin got two more bucks, several tree squirrels and some mountain quail. We made plenty of jerky, while living off the fat of ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... Nelson, with his eyes cast down, gave me the whole story of the Heemskirk episode in Freya's words; then went on in his rather jerky utterance, and looking ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... returned to the upright in the same number of counts, and at an unusually slow "One" it is bent as far back as comfortable only from the waist, being returned to the upright at "Two." Care should be taken to see that this motion is slow and not jerky. The entire movement ...
— Keeping Fit All the Way • Walter Camp
... so, picked up a letter lying on his seat and glanced at the writing. He gave a start that was visible even to the watchers at the other side of the road, then plucked it open with nervous, jerky movements. He glanced quickly through it and sprang uncontrollably to his feet, his face aflame ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... exclaimed Tiffles. "Not a new kind of steam engine; or an electrical apparatus; or a clock; or a sewing machine; or anything for spinning, carding, or weaving—nothing that is adapted to any useful labor. These heavy weights, that have fallen on the floor, would give the works a kind of jerky motion for a few seconds, while the weights were descending. Nothing more. But the ultimate purpose of the ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... he runs a certain risk of falling into evil ways. The risk is multiplied by every addition to the population up to twelve- -the Jury-number. After that, fear and consequent restraint begin, and human action becomes less grotesquely jerky. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... kinsmen had been punished with death. Don Jose Avellanos was perhaps the only one living who knew the whole story of those unspeakable cruelties. He had suffered from them himself, and he, with a shrug of the shoulders and a nervous, jerky gesture of the arm, was wont to put away from him, as it were, every allusion to it. But whatever the reason, Dr. Monygham, a personage in the administration of the Gould Concession, treated with reverent awe by the miners, and indulged in his peculiarities ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... the partners. Lockyer was archaic, Sanders an antique; Benchley, actually only about fifty-five, had the air of one born in the grandfather class. Lockyer the son dyed his hair and affected jauntiness, but was in fact not many years younger than Benchley and had the stiffening jerky legs of one paying for a lively youth. Norman was thirty-seven—at the age the Greeks extolled as divine because it means all the best of youth combined with all the best of manhood. Some people thought Norman younger, almost ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... up there all by myself, with nobody to speak to. Besides, not since I was a boy, I reflected, had I enjoyed a run down a really steep hill. I thought I would see if I could revive the sensation. It is a jerky exercise, but good, I should ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... keep on running this place alone; it's getting too big for you; too much money circulating through The Polka. You need a man behind you." All this was said in short, jerky sentences; moreover, when she placed his change in front of him he pushed it ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... is something about machinery," admitted Russ. "It is something new to go on moving picture machines, to steady the film as it moves behind the lens. You've often noticed how jerky the pictures are at times?" ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... seemed to liven up under the influence of speed. The wind was howling now, and conversation was impossible, except in short, jerky sentences. They were on the high level of the prairie and were getting the full benefit of the open ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... finished his jerky sentences, pointed to an eminence which was two or three hundred yards from where they stood, and a like distance ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... Parmalee's talk, which was thrown at me in jerky, desultory sentences, and interested me not at all. I went on with my work of investigation, and though I did not get down on my knees and examine every square inch of the carpet with a lens, yet I thoroughly ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... Have you got a hot-water bottle?' asked a sudden jerky voice, and he turned with a start to see Jane Anne ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... in the morning," proffered Dick after a few moments. Then, as this elicited no remark, "We can stock her up with jerky, and there's no reason she shouldn't make it." Sam remained grimly silent. "Is there?" insisted Dick. He waited a minute for a reply. Then, as none came, "Hell!" he exclaimed, disgustedly, and turned away ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... the piled-up dishes. His gaze followed her covertly. Even her walk was graceful, not at all the hobble or the jerky pace or the slouch of the ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... expensive: he did not care, for he hated to speak of money matters, yet he could not but mention the fact. When the money began to arrive he did not resent it by any means, as he was to buy a blood horse with it—no less. His letters have a jolly, bullying, but offhand and jerky tone, and they are very short. He gives Murray advice on publishing and is willing to advise the Government how to manage ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... was waiting for you to tell me." He slid his big hand over Hal's shoulder, and clutched him in a sudden, jerky ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of the baldacchino, between the wing-like drapery on either side, enclosing, as it were, a brasier of glory, he assumed real majesty of aspect. He was no longer the feeble old man with the slow, jerky walk and the slender, scraggy neck of a poor ailing bird. The simious ugliness of his face, the largeness of his nose, the long slit of his mouth, the hugeness of his ears, the conflicting jumble of his withered features disappeared. In that waxen ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... muscular man, of medium size, quick and jerky in his movements, and springy in his gait. His face is broad and tanned, his cheek bones high, and his nose a snub. His beard is short and thin and grizzled, and his gray hair, curling at the ends, hangs around his neck. His shoulders ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... mass of somewhat jerky, contradictory information, had gleaned that the new leading part at the London theatre had been gained through the middle-aged bridegroom's influence, her comment ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... me, that sharp-faced little wisp could do things to a violin! Zowie! He could just naturally make it sing, with weeps and laughs, and moans and giggles, and groans and cusswords, all strung along a jumpy, jerky little air that sort of played hide and seek with itself. Music? I should quiver! He had us all sittin' up with our ears stretched, and when he finishes and the applause starts in like a sudden shower on a tin roof what does ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... indignant that Barbara should desert her own party the first night, but vaguely disquieted that she was ill enough to go to bed of her own volition, peeped into her room on his way down to dinner. There was no answer to his jerky, sharp call of "Barbara" and he turned on the light. Her eyes were closed, but she was smiling; he walked to the bed to make certain that she was not trying any of her tricks ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... and without selection, he knocked violently at any house that he happened to pass. His blows, on which he was expending his last energies, were jerky and without aim; now ceasing altogether for a time, now renewed as if in irritation. It was the violence of his fever ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... drop of perspiration to be seen. She had not even taken her cap off, a black cap trimmed with green ribbons turned partly yellow. And she stood perfectly upright in front of the ironing-table, which was too high for her, sticking out her elbows, and moving her iron with the jerky evolutions of a puppet. On ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... know about him. The thing that happened was a woman. It would be that way. He was too happy. Something had to come into his world. Something had to drive him out of the New York room to live out his life an obscure, jerky little figure, bobbing up and down on the streets of an Ohio town at evening when the sun was going down behind the roof of Wesley Moyer's ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... part about it was that not the slightest sound could be heard. The little thin fish opened and shut his mouth in little, short, jerky gasps, to which the King replied by slowly opening and shutting his, rolling his eyes about meanwhile, just as you may have seen ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... across the white, faintly ruled paper wrapped about the revolving drum, I watched the long-shanked, awkward pen of the barograph in our Weather Bureau station at Galveston. In the jerky, scrawling fashion of a child writing his first copy on a slate, I saw the pen gradually draw what looked like a rough profile map—a long declining plateau, a steep and then a steeper slope, a ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... for a moment. They were already within earshot of the thresher. And the droning of the machine and the jerky spluttering of the traction engine sounded pleasantly in the sultry atmosphere. The dog hobbled lazily at her heels, nor did he show the least sign of interest in his surroundings. The wagons loaded with bountiful sheaves were drawing up to the thresher from half-a-dozen directions, whilst ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... being almost in the open sea now—for the sides of the bay diverged so greatly after a time that the opposite coasts could not be seen—the boat was under sail instead of being pulled along; and the motion was ever so much more pleasant than when it was oscillated to and fro by the sharp jerky strokes of the rowers. ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... this jerky to-night?" said somebody, as I climbed the wheel. "Well, we'll give thanks for not havin' eight," he added cheerfully. "Clamp your mind on to that, Shorty." And he slapped the shoulder of his neighbor. Naturally I took these two for old companions. But we were all total strangers. They told me of ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... her trumpet violently engaged in receiving refreshment. But conversation was not quite so varied as usual, for there was an attitude of intense expectation about with regard to the appearance of Miss Bracely, that made talk rather jerky and unconnective. Then also it had gone about that the mysterious Indian, who had been seen now and then during the last week, was actually staying with Mrs Lucas, and why was he not here? More unconjecturable yet, though not so thrillingly interesting, was the absence of Mr Georgie. What could ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... he discovered that Ling Chu understood English quite as well as he understood Cantonese, and Whiteside was able from time to time to interject a word, or correct some little slip on Tarling's part. The Chinaman listened without comment and when Tarling had finished he made one of his queer jerky bows and went out of ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... coachman drive fast, and while the horses trotted rapidly along the Rue Royale and the boulevards, she told what had happened to Nana in jerky, breathless sentences. ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... temptation for a young author to write a book that will have a large sale; but that should not be all. We should have a higher object than that, and strive to interest those who read the book. It should not be jerky ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... protruding from the window like a snail, was entertained by the spectacle of the pursuit. The hunt was up. Short of throwing his head up and baying, the stout young man behaved exactly as a bloodhound in similar circumstances would have conducted itself. He broke into a jerky gallop, attended by his self-appointed associates; and, considering that the young man was so stout, that the messenger boy considered it unprofessional to hurry, that the shop girl had doubts as to whether sprinting was quite ladylike, and that the two ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... immobility. The question now was, would she recover at all from it? Hour after hour we waited and watched; and not a sign of movement! Only the same deep, slow, hampered breathing, the same feeble, jerky pulse, the same deathly pallor on the dark cheeks, the same corpse-like rigidity ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... exhausted, having, like most unpractised swimmers, pumped himself out by splashing about with short jerky movements of his hands and legs, which only wearied him without advancing him through the opposing billows or assisting him to keep up; and, on my coming up to him, as all drowning men in similar circumstances invariably do, he made a frantic clutch at me, when, ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... his stiff and jerky circling of the ape-man, much after the manner that you have noted among dogs when a strange canine comes among them, it occurred to Tarzan to discover if the language of his own tribe was identical with that of this other family, and so he addressed the brute in the language ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... turned from that stolen reading of the opening verse in jerky, feverish, gouty manuscript, to the writer, let out his soul perhaps; for the poet's face struck fire too, and seeming to detect on a sudden the legible document of something by no means conventional below the ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... reply, in the jerky speech characteristic of the man. "Greatest breeding-place in the world. You'll see. Nothing like it anywhere else. And, what's more, it's almost the last. This is the only fort left to prevent the destruction not of a tribe—but of an entire species ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... black as a crow's wing in the sun. Her little, rosebud mouth pouted and smiled, and altogether she was so sweet and dainty and graceful that the middle-aged, gray-bearded Americano began to beam upon her with admiring eyes and to hover over her with jerky, heavy attempts at gallantry. He asked her name, but she took sudden alarm and answered only with a shrug of her shoulders and a swooning glance of her great black eyes. He put his arm about her waist ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... treat you and Ward white," said Stockton. "You'll have good grub. Herky-Jerky's the best cook this side of Holston, and you'll be left untied in the daytime. But if either of you attempts to get away it means a leg shot off. ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... envelope Bobby kept his eyes in mild speculation, while he leisurely laid aside his cane and removed his gloves and coat and hat; next he sat down in his father's jerky old swivel chair and lit a cigarette; then he opened ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... for its course of about 540 feet is watched by the peasants with breathless attention, for they take its easy or jerky flight as ominous of the weather for the rest of the year and of the prospects of harvest. If the bird sails along without a hitch, then the summer will be fine, but if there be sluggishness of movement, and one halt, then another, the ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... began, speaking in the same jerky and subdued voice, 'don't criticise me, don't think any harm of me. I wrote a letter to you, I made an appointment to meet you, because ... I was afraid.... It seemed to me yesterday,—you seemed to be laughing all the time. Listen,' she added, with sudden energy, and she stopped ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... hunting-ground of those insect desperadoes, the mason-wasps, that flew about loudly buzzing in their splendid gold and scarlet uniform. There were also many little shy birds here, and my favourite was the wren, for in its appearance and its scolding, jerky, gesticulating ways it is precisely like our house-wren, though it has a richer and more powerful song than the English bird. On the other side of the hedge was the potrero, or paddock, where a milch-cow with two or three horses were kept. The manservant, whose name was Nepomucino, ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... trimmed with green ribbons turned partly yellow. And she stood perfectly upright in front of the ironing-table, which was too high for her, sticking out her elbows, and moving her iron with the jerky evolutions of a puppet. On ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... forward with a jerk, ran with increasing gait for a hundred yards, and then suddenly the jerky progress ceased. The machine swayed gently from side to side, and looking over, the passenger saw ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... the brush hewa of the Supai or the stone pueblo of the Hopi. They gather the pinon nuts and grind them into meal. They crush the corn into meal, and thresh and winnow the beans, and dry the pumpkin for winter use. They cut the meat into strips and cure it into jerky. They dry the grapes and peaches. They garner the acorns and store them in huge baskets of their own weaving. They shear the sheep, and wash, dye, spin, and weave the wool into marvelous blankets. They cut the willows and gather sweet grasses for the making of baskets ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... a little confused and nervous in her movements, was pulling a chair close to the fire, begging Marguerite to sit. Her words came out all the while in short jerky sentences, and from time to time she stole swift shy glances at ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... definition in an apologetic voice. But in truth there is a sort of lucidity proper to extravagant language, and the great man was not offended. A slight jerky movement of the big body half lost in the gloom of the green silk shades, of the big head leaning on the big hand, accompanied an intermittent stifled but powerful sound. ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... his characteristic habit of phrase making and became more jerky and real. "I respected you, Alice," he went on. "I didn't love you but I hoped I might, and I played the game. I liked to see you in my house. You fitted in and made it more of a home than that barrack had ever been. I began to collect ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... the heel are small. We must admit, however, that the gait of dark-skinned races is usually easy and graceful. We Europeans, on the other hand, having short heels, need more powerful muscles to move them, and hence our calves are usually well developed, but our gait is apt to be jerky. ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... trumpet violently engaged in receiving refreshment. But conversation was not quite so varied as usual, for there was an attitude of intense expectation about with regard to the appearance of Miss Bracely, that made talk rather jerky and unconnective. Then also it had gone about that the mysterious Indian, who had been seen now and then during the last week, was actually staying with Mrs Lucas, and why was he not here? More unconjecturable yet, though not so thrillingly ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... motion resembled the writhing of some prehistoric monster rather than the movements of individual human beings. In that half-light tossing arms and legs looked like tentacles flung out in agony by the mammoth reptile. Its progress was jerky and convulsive, sometimes tortuous, but it traveled slowly toward the rail as if by the ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... declare if I ain't obleged to ye jest as much as if you'd 'a' minded me.' She ventured near the window, and even put her head out. 'My! they look jest like flies a-walkin'! My! we can't look much to the angels lookin' down. They go awful jerky.' She said no more until we were almost at the bottom, then she turned to Miss Ross: 'I've a good mind to go round ag'in,' she declared, and when she was told that we were all 'going round ag'in,' she drew close to the window and made ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... are large, with great white cotton coverings, and generally drawn by six mules: the driver, usually a colored man, rides the first nigh mule, and has one rein, called the 'jerky rein,' running over the head of the mule before him, through a ring fastened to his headstall, and dividing on the back of the leader, and fastening to his bit. The mule is directed to one side or another by the driver twitching ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... dream-like and strange: the awful, overwhelming, crushing sound of the wind seemed to press upon my brain so that I could not for a long time think, only lie and try to breathe without catching each inspiration in a jerky, spasmodic way. ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... about the room, sometimes excitedly, his mind engrossed with his subject, until he has composed an entire paragraph, when he sits down and writes it, never retouching, nor composing sentence by sentence, which he thinks has a tendency to give an abrupt and jerky effect to what is written. Traces of this, he thinks, may be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... to bite his lips to bleeding-point, to keep back his groans, Frobisher contrived to raise himself to a sitting posture, and he then discovered that he was in a closed litter of some sort, or palanquin, which, he could tell by its short, jerky motion, was being borne ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... glass with a jerky motion and downed the contents; the chaser stood disregarded before him and O'Brien regarded his patron with an eye ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... give an idea of the jerky style of the lady's singing which so tickled our sensitive ears. At every repetition of the refrain, Susy and I squeezed our locked fingers spasmodically in order to suppress the unseemly laughter bubbling to our lips. At every emphatic word she nodded at us merrily, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... me about them," replied Anthony pertly, "I guess I know how to paddle as well as you do. You don't always need to be handing me directions how to do things." And he started off with a series of jerky dips, which set the canoe swaying from side to side so that Migwan had an effort to keep it straight in ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... This jerky shift of position, on the part of the foe, spoiled Bruce's aim. His fearful jaws snapped together harmlessly in empty air at a spot where, a fraction of a second earlier, the other's throat had been. Down crashed the disguised man. And atop of him the furious ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... my Tibetan tent, they had made for it, expecting to find some of their own countrymen, and their embarrassment was amusing when they found themselves face to face with Dr. Wilson and myself. Hurriedly removing their fur caps, they laid them upon the ground and made a comical jerky curtsey, as if their heads and knees moved by means of a spring. They put out their tongues full length and kept them so until I made signs that they could draw them back, as I wanted them to answer some questions. This unexpected meeting ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... saber know, learn, find out. sabroso, -a tasty, delicious, palatable. sacro, -a holy, sacred. sacudido, -a harsh, jerky. sacudir shake, shake off, strike. sagrado, -a sacred, holy. Salamanca pr. n. f. Salamanca. salir come out, go out, get out, emerge, issue, turn out, appear, show up; —— de leave, get out. saltar(se) jump, spring, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... whose faith in the purpose of the struggling world inspired Una. Una walked with her up Madison Avenue, past huge old brownstone mansions, and she was unconscious of suiting her own quick step to Miss Magen's jerky lameness as the Jewess talked of her ideals of a business world which should have generosity and chivalry and the accuracy of a biological laboratory; in which there would be no need of charity to ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... White laid an imploring hand on Flora Clark's arm when she manifested symptoms of rising and interrupting the reading. Flora was getting angry—I knew by the way her forehead was knitted and by the jerky way she sewed. Poor Harriet Jameson looked more and more distressed. I was sure she saw Mrs. White holding back Flora, and knew just what it meant. Harriet was sitting quite idle with her little hands in her lap; ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... believe. He, too, spoke to me that evening about Rosalind's engagement. I remember how he walked up and down the dining-room, with his hands behind him and his head bent forward, and his quick, nervous, jerky movements. ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... from the wind. I do not know whether they meant to be as humorous as they were, but I can hardly think they were not amused at each other. They stood and lay very close together, with fierce glances, and quick, jerky motions of the head. Now and then one, tired of inaction, raised a deliberate claw, bowed its head, scratched with incredible rapidity, shook its tumbled feathers, and looked round with angry self-consciousness, as though to say: "I ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of it all. This is Brown—Harry Brown—the nightman at the mine down here. We've got the ambulance here and we're about ready to start." There was an evenness about the strange voice that she understood better than its words. If Bill had been hurt the man would have been quick and jerky in his speaking as though he were feeling the boy's pain with him; but he was so even about it all—as even ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... have to be done. They couldn't go on like this.... Her mind went to and fro, quickly, with short jerky movements, distressed; it had to do so much thinking in so ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... harsh, unsparing honesty, that it must be a "hitch inside;" a cramp or an awkwardness born in her, that set her eyes, peering and sharp, so near together, and put that knot into her brows instead of their widening placidly, like Rosamond's, and made her jerky in her speech. It was no use; she couldn't look and behave, because she couldn't be; she must just go boggling and kinking ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... interested in Rydal, and she sprayed Coryndon with light, pointless conversation, leaving Heath to his meditations for the moment. Hartley would have enjoyed a private talk with his hostess because he loved her platonically, and because it was impossible he was distrait and jerky, trying to appear cordial towards Heath. It was one of those evenings that make everyone concerned wonder why they ever began it, and though Coryndon was of all the invited guests the one who found least favour in the ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... of the quality of the human mind, with its every-day, jerky reasoning powers and its submerged, smooth intuitions, finds its strongest support in such ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... responded the officer, in his usual short, jerky way. "Lucky to catch you here, too, before you ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... through," replied the other without moving, "but in the same jerky fashion. Every time I get it, it seems to have gone back to the beginning—just Dr. ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... work, and made the boat leap forward by a shorter, almost jerky stroke. He came back easily with five minutes ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... peered at him through the shadows. He did not move. He was sleeping heavily, curiously, irregularly, his breath coming in jerky little snorts. "Oh," she wailed in her guilt heart, "he is, he is! Poor dear old Joey, drunk! And it's all, all my fault!" Swiftly she undressed in the dark. If he were to awaken, to begin saying awful ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... the Rochester stage must have been rather low, when we find two such persons as Jingle and Dismal Jemmy members of the corps. Jingle's jerky system of elocution would seem a complete disqualification. From sheer habit, it would have been impossible for him to say his lines in any other fashion—which in all the round of light "touch and go" comedy, ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... not sure," said Elizabeth Eliza, "but it would be less dangerous to keep the cow in the lot behind the house, because she would not be coming and going, morning and night, in that jerky way the Larkins' cows come home. They don't mind which gate they rush in at. I should hate to have our cow dash into our front yard just as I was coming home ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... this class of property; but in Paris the law is a dead letter, and, although it is now active in the provinces and in places like Marseilles, Lyons, Bordeaux, and Nantes, it is applied, even there, in a jerky and intermittent manner. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... until such time as his podgy legs had hardened sufficiently to bear his weight—with many falls, of course—and then he began to scurry about on his feet. His usual style of progression at this period was to take from two to four abrupt, jerky strides, rather with the air of a fussy and corpulent old gentleman who had to catch a train, and then to subside in a confused lump, on chest and nose, with tail waggling angrily in mid-air. This was not so annoying to the grey pup as one might suppose, because, though generally in a hurry, ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... pocket he brought out a bit of dried beef, the "jerky" of the southwest. He held it out arm's length, sending his horse racing forward with a sudden touch of his spur. The big dog barked eagerly and launched his sinewy body into the air; the sunlight flashed back a moment from ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... was rising, and it was as if the heat of it rekindled her animation. With a jerky movement she flung up both her hands, grasping tensely the arms ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... sketches, I have never written a line for publication in my life. I have only kept a careful and accurate diary, [Footnote: Out of all my diaries I have hardly been able to quote fifty pages, for on re- reading them I find they are not only full of Cabinet secrets but jerky, disjointed and dangerously frank.] and here, in the interests of my publishers and at the risk of being thought egotistical, it is not inappropriate that I should publish the following letters in connection with ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... sunlight of ten o'clock in the morning the mother runs up and down the chosen pod, first on one side, then on the other, with a jerky, capricious, unmethodical gait. She repeatedly extrudes a short oviduct, which oscillates right and left as though to graze the skin of the pod. An egg follows, which is abandoned ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... with her scarf, twisting it and pulling it to pieces, with jerky, impatient movements that seemed to tell of inward dissatisfaction and ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... themselves in a corner from which through a hole where the tiles had fallen off the roof, they could see down into the barnyard, where white and speckled chickens pecked about with jerky movements. A middle-aged woman stood in the doorway of the house looking suspiciously at the files of khaki-clad soldiers that shuffled slowly into ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... jovial men have their moments of depression. R. Jones' face clouded, and jerky remarks about hardness of times and losses on the Stock Exchange began to proceed from him. As Scotland Yard had discovered, he lent money on occasion; but he did not lend it to ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... or correcting, judgment of Mr. E. DROOD, I make bold to guess that the modern true lover's mind, such as it is, is rendered jerky by contemplation of the lady who has made him the object of her virgin affectations," proceeded Mr. DIBBLE, looking intently at EDWIN, but still making farther and farther reaches toward the distant crackers, even to the increased tilting of his chair. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... seemed to have deserted him, and as he went on with his revelation he spoke in jerky sentences, with ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... the direction of the stables—a tall, delicate boy, and a strange old man. The old man walked with a quick, jerky, stride. It was the old country doctor Gaeki. And, unlike any other man of his profession, he would work as long and as carefully on the body of a horse as he would on the body of a man, snapping out his quaint oaths, and in a stress of effort, as though he struggled with some invisible creature ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... repose, Marcella felt herself a naked soul, alone on a wide sea, with shapes of pain and agony and revolt. She looked at the sleeping wife. "He, too, is probably asleep," she thought, remembering some information which a kindly warder had given her in a few jerky, well-meant sentences, while she was waiting downstairs in the gaol for Minta Hurd. "Incredible! only so many hours, minutes left—so far as any mortal knows—of living, thinking, recollecting, of all that makes us something as ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... must picture me, when first it was given into my care, turning it over, curiously, and making a swift, jerky examination. A small book it is; but thick, and all, save the last few pages, filled with a quaint but legible handwriting, and writ very close. I have the queer, faint, pit-water smell of it in my nostrils now as I write, and my fingers have subconscious memories ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... all the energy he could into a series of short jerky strokes, using the muscles of his arms, failing altogether to get the weight of his body on the oar. At the end of twenty minutes Priscilla ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... your pardon," he exclaimed in a quick, jerky way. "The three thousand dollars is here, but these bills have been put in the box this morning; they were not there last night. It is not the money that was taken away, either. That was one bill, a thousand-dollar note; and here are"—he ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... the gold frame. Below, the door on to the balcony gaped wide open. Lavretsky sat down on a wooden garden-seat, leaned on his elbow, and began to watch this door and Lisa's window. In the town it struck midnight; a little clock in the house shrilly clanged out twelve; the watchman beat it with jerky strokes upon his board. Lavretsky had no thought, no expectation; it was sweet to him to feel himself near Lisa, to sit in her garden on the seat where she herself had sat ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... excessively exhausting to some people. They are the talkers that have what may be called jerky minds. Their thoughts do not run in the natural order of sequence. They say bright things on all possible subjects, but their zigzags rack you to death. After a jolting half-hour with one of these jerky companions, talking with a dull friend affords great relief. It is like taking the cat in your lap after holding ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... enough to buy A case of wine (though I abhor it!) I'd send a case of extra dry, And willingly get trusted for it. But, lack a day! you know that I'm As poor as Job's historic turkey— In lieu of Mumm, accept this rhyme, An honest gift, though somewhat jerky. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... so near like dying as when she suggested that you might have fallen from the train. I sent Hedrick ahead to summon the conductor, but he had hardly left us when the engine whistled sharply and the train began to slow up in a jerky fashion. We were very pale as we looked at each other, for something told us that the stop was unusual. I rushed to the platform meeting Hedrick, who was as much alarmed as I. He said the train had been flagged, and that there ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... at a loss, had already climbed upon a low projection in the wall of one of the houses opposite. From this point of vantage he could more easily observe what went on inside the cabaret, and in short, jerky sentences he gave a description of what he saw to ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... contradicted fiercely, as if that could make it different. He thought he could not bear those jerky sentences. ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... and close to the sides. This done, the feet are drawn up together, as in breast swimming, and then kicked out together. As the arms are the chief driving power, swimming on the back is at best but a slow, jerky method of proceeding, but if one has not learned to float, it is a good way to rest for a bit in ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... Ivan!" exclaimed Warren, after a few miles of this jerky progress. "What ails the thing? Do you suppose the dub knows how ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... the detective's face grew plainer, it almost gave him the air of being unnerved; and he said quickly, in a jerky voice: "Yes, and I know his way of acting too. During the last ten years I have learnt to unravel his intrigues—to understand and anticipate his manoeuvres.... Oh, his is a clever system! ... Instead of lying low, as you'd expect, ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... heart an' another on his lips; an' one day he fetched up inside a faery rath. The pipers were pipin' an' the Wee People was dancin', an' while they was dancin' they was singin' like this: 'Monday an' Tuesday—an' Monday an' Tuesday—an' Monday an' Tuesday'—an' it sounded all jerky and bad. 'That's a terrible poor song,' says the humpy, speakin' out plain. 'What's that?' says the faeries, stoppin' their dance an' gatherin' round him. ''Tis mortal poor music ye are making' says the humpy ag'in. 'Can ye improve it any?' asked the faeries. 'I can that,' says the humpy. 'Add Wednesday ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... distracted from listening to the music by the conspicuous awkwardness of the conductor's hand movements. This grace in baton-manipulation need not interfere in any way with the definiteness or precision of the beat. In fact an easy, graceful beat usually results in a firmer rhythmic response than a jerky, awkward one. For the first beat of the measure the entire arm (upper as well as lower) moves vigorously downward, but for the remaining beats the movement is mostly confined to the elbow and wrist. In the case of a divided beat (see pages 23 and 24) the movement comes almost entirely ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... While Audubon's warblers kept themselves for the most part among the pines on the slopes and acclivities, the little black-caps preferred the lower ground. Their songs were not brilliant performances, though rather pleasing, being short, jerky trills, somewhat lower in the scale than those of ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... built, muscular man, of medium size, quick and jerky in his movements, and springy in his gait. His face is broad and tanned, his cheek bones high, and his nose a snub. His beard is short and thin and grizzled, and his gray hair, curling at the ends, hangs around his neck. His shoulders are sloping, his chest deep but not wide, his arms long, and ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... weather was glorious at Averill. They had a fine pack of hounds; coursing for jack-rabbit was their favorite sport, and, despite the fact that Foster had a beautiful and speedy horse, "his seat was so poor and his hand so jerky he never managed to get up to the ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... and abrupt in their actions, and their speech, in moments of hot discussion over the allotment of the choicer teeth, was truly a gabble. They spoke in monosyllables and short jerky sentences that was more a gibberish than a language. And yet, through it ran hints of grammatical construction, and appeared vestiges of the conjugation of some superior culture. Even the speech of Granser was so corrupt that were it put down literally it would be almost so much nonsense ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... old-fashioned affair that wound up noisily with a big key. It played several jerky little waltzes and four plaintive old songs: "Ben Bolt," "The Last Rose of Summer," "Then You'll Remember Me," and "Home, Sweet Home." The children had sung them so often that they knew all the words, and their voices rang out lustily at first; but, about the twentieth ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... Ivan's past are given in his jerky confessions—he is the most miserable and unhappy of men, and you behold that he is reaping as ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... hawbuck," he said, with spasmodic jocularity; "I'm uncommon glad to see you." He came to a jerky close, with an indrawing of his breath. "I'm about done," he went on. "Same old thing—sciatica. Took me just after I got here this afternoon; sent out one of the messengers to buy me a sofa, and here I've been ever since. Well, and what's brought you up—don't answer, I know ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... candy for her because they happened to be born on the same day of the month. And then he played the fiddle until almost one o'clock. He played all the simple, sweet, old-time pieces, in rather a squeaky, jerky way, I am afraid, but the music suited the ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... think I'm going to do?" Nelson was on his feet now and pacing his office with jerky strides. "Take a loss like that?" He paused and glared at the bearer of bad tidings, then growled: "What are you grinning about? Oh, you needn't say it. You want ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... heath, so bleak and wretched in December, was a daily delight now the sun was glinting over the sea and the gorse was in bud, and the stonechats, which had vanished during the cold weather, were back among the boulders, darting from stone to stone in short, jerky flight, with that sharp, jarring cry which is the prelude to their sweeter spring note. The moorland air at 8 a.m. was so fresh and pure and exhilarating that it seemed to blow away all the cobwebs, and Gwen often ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... the "new" man, if there are such things. I wondered just how they would hit it off together. For the moment, at least, Clare Kendall was an absorbing study, as she greeted us with a frank, jerky straight-arm handshake. ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... garden. Neighbors' hens in your garden are an annoyance. Even if they did not scratch up the corn, and peck the strawberries, and eat the tomatoes, it is not pleasant to see them straddling about in their jerky, high-stepping, speculative manner, picking inquisitively here and there. It is of no use to tell the neighbor that his hens eat your tomatoes: it makes no impression on him, for the tomatoes are not his. The best way is to casually remark to him that he ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... chatted merrily enough, if in a somewhat jerky fashion, but Martin attempted no talk. Only as he proceeded he was heard to mutter between his teeth, "Lucky the Pastor Arentz can't see us now. He would never understand, he is so one-sided." So at least ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... absorbed in my book, I would have a vague consciousness of the connection between the various singsongs and their respective performers. I would be aware that the bass voice with the flourishes in front of me belonged to the stuttering widower from Vitebsk, that the squeaky, jerky intonation to the right came from the red-headed fellow whom I loathed for his thick lips, or that the sweet, unassertive cadences that came floating from the east wall were being uttered by Reb Rachmiel, the "man of acumen" whose father-in-law had made a fortune ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... included four Heavies besides the flagship, with twelve Mediums and twenty Lights. They slanted down in a jerky evasive course while pictures flashed on screens to be compared ...
— Tulan • Carroll Mather Capps
... doll-cart, was also dressed like a doll. The boy looked very handsome, in a black velvet suit with lace ruffles at the wrists and knees, and long white stockings with black slippers. He was clever, too, in assuming the character, and walked with stiff, jerky strides, like a mechanical doll that had just ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... with clay. The top of the chimney was surrounded by a barrel with both ends open, through which the smoke climbed lazily up into the air. Near by stood an oak-tree, in which a jay-bird was screaming and dancing in a jerky way. Sukey then looked away into the blue sky, and the clouds seemed to become pagodas, and palm-trees, and golden ships floating drowsily away. All at once she heard somebody say, ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... for several hours. Even Pepperill could not avoid a decorous smile. Then the clerk pulled out the copy of Al-Hoda and rustled it, and His Honor, who had been dreaming that he was riding through the narrow streets of Bagdad upon a jerky white dromedary so tall that he could peek through the latticed balconies at the plump, black-eyed odalisques within the harems, slowly came back from Turkey to ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... it was pitch dark in his cabin. The candles, which he had neglected to extinguish, had burned themselves out. The short, jerky motion of the steamer indicated that he was aboard a small vessel, and that this small vessel was out in the open sea. He believed that a noise of some kind had awakened him, and this was confirmed ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... what the trouble was, and Sadie told her in jerky sentences. Charnock had started for the railroad early that morning, and after he left she discovered that he had written a cheque, payable ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... or a clock; or a sewing machine; or anything for spinning, carding, or weaving—nothing that is adapted to any useful labor. These heavy weights, that have fallen on the floor, would give the works a kind of jerky motion for a few seconds, while the weights were descending. Nothing more. But the ultimate purpose of ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... a huge, shaggy, black thing, all head and shoulders, with body slanting back abruptly to a pair of weak hindquarters. Down the slope it ran in quick, noiseless, jerky steps; the yearling turned his head, still munching, ears cocked forward. And suddenly the monster rushed at him with a squeal, and the yearling shrieked and fled, ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... the hereditary estate of her husband the lady had never visited it, owing to its insulation by this well-nigh impracticable ground. The drive to the base of the hill was tedious and jerky, and on reaching it she alighted, directing that the carriage should be driven back empty over the clods, to wait for her on the nearest edge of the field. She then ascended beneath ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... the cove, where a few men in dories were engaged in jigging for squid, pulling in the wriggling things which had been attracted by a piece of red rag, their tentacles caught upon the upturned needles of the jig. They were dropped with a sharp, jerky motion on the slimy mass of their fellows, all blotched with the inky discharge. Out beyond the rocky headlands, in the open sea, the little two-masted smacks were hurrying to anchor or already bobbing up ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... later Jerry and Mr. Bullfinch were on their way to Rockville. Jerry had never ridden in Mr. Bullfinch's car before. It was not the car that was jerky, Jerry discovered, but Mr. Bullfinch. Still, he was a careful driver except when he got to talking. Then he seemed to forget his was not the only car on the road and the other cars honked at him. Yet Mr. Bullfinch was good at missing ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson
... dinner. Besides, he felt dull; his gout bothered him and he had been forced to run for his train. He had begun to find out one could not do that kind of thing. Mrs. Cartwright sat opposite, knitting quietly, and her smooth, rhythmic movements were soothing. Clara was never abrupt and jerky. ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... not have an abrupt and jerky ending. It is not uncommon especially in class room debate, to hear a student at the close of his discussion say, "This is my proof; I leave the decision to the judges"; or "Thus you see I have established my proposition." Such an ending can in no way be called a conclusion ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... gather. Only English larks and linnets, cowslips and hawthorn, were to be found in the toy-books and little histories read to him. "Everything was British: even the robin, a domestic bird," wrote the doctor, "instead of a great fidgety, jerky, whooping thrush." But when Peter Parley, Jacob Abbott, Lydia Maria Child, Mrs. Embury, and Eliza Leslie began to write short stories, the Annuals and periodicals abounded in American scenes ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... Chauvin got two more bucks, several tree squirrels and some mountain quail. We made plenty of jerky, while living off the ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... the napkin-ring, and humorously taunted him with not having packed everything, after all. The stage drove on, but for the next mile his breathing was jerky. ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... mirrored,—when a slight creaking, cracking sound was heard, as of some obstacle grazing against or bumping the side of the yacht. He looked, and saw, to his surprise, a small rowing boat close under the gunwale, so close indeed that the slow motion of the tide heaved it every now and then into a jerky collision with the lower framework of the Eulalie—a circumstance which explained the sound which had attracted his attention. The boat was not unoccupied—there was some one in it lying straight across the seats, with face turned upwards to the sky—and, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... a golf club with a jerky, uneven stroke, and come down on the helpless turf with the head of it, as if beating a carpet, has always given me a chill and a sensation of wild rage, but there is something about the way Miss Harding does ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... gulping sigh of relief, flashed across the room on tiptoe, and went down on his knees beside the monstrous thing, moving the candle this way and that along the length of it, as if searching for something, and laughing in little jerky gasps of relief when he found nothing that was not as it had been—as it should be—as he wanted it to be. And then, as he rose and patted the clay, and laughed aloud as he realized how hard it had set, then, at that instant, a white shape lurched ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... touched. As Norris jerked out his gun Bellamy caught his wrist. They struggled for an instant, the one to free his arm, the other to retain his grip. Bellamy spurred his horse closer. The more powerful of the two, he slowly twisted around the imprisoned wrist. Inch by inch the revolver swung in a jerky, spasmodic circle. There was a moment when it pointed directly at the mine owner's heart. His enemy's finger crooked on the trigger, eyes passionate with the stark lust to kill. But the pressure on the wrist had numbed the hand. ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... night; but they have no sandals. The dance is performed by the shaman's assistants, and consists of a peculiar, quick, jumping march, with short steps, the dancers moving forward one after another, on their toes, and making sharp, jerky movements, without, however, turning around. They dance in the space between the fire and the cross, and move in a direction opposite to the sun's apparent movement. Nobody present is allowed to walk in contra-direction to the dancers. After six or eight rounds, they enlarge ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... on the back the man bustled out in his jerky fashion, leaving her weeping over the ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... into a new house, was asked to walk up stairs, and on complying saw an old woman preceding her up the staircase. Supposing her to be one of the servants, she took but little notice of her, though struck by the peculiarity of her gait, a sort of jerky limp, as though one leg was shorter than the other. In the course of conversation with her friend she mentioned the old woman, and asked if she was the housekeeper. "Housekeeper? no," said the lady: "we have no such person about our house. You must have been mistaken." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... off; my husband's dying; the doctor said he must go South; we've sold everything left to send him; now he's dying; I must go to him. But I have no money, don't put me off. My God—my God—if you—" Her plea poured out in excited, jerky sentences. But the conductor could do nothing. He must obey his instructions, or be discharged. The woman sank back sobbing, in the seat. The conductor turned back to get the ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... Nothing had occurred to mar the even life of the young adventurers left behind. This was the tenor of the message, but there was something about it that worried Frank. Lathrop, he knew, was an expert wireless operator, but the sending that he performed that morning was so jerky and irregular that the rankest amateur might have ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... timber-jack, told Mrs. Gaynor in his abashed stammer that Mark King had showed up while they were gone. Gloria, on her way to her room, whirled and came back, and extracted the tale in its entirety, pumping it out of the brief, few-worded old Spalding in jerky details. King had appeared late yesterday afternoon, coming out of the woods. Looked like he'd been roughin' it an' goin' it hard, at that. Had told Jim he wanted to telephone. Had stuck around for a while gettin' his call through; had eaten supper with Jim; had gone back into ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... James consulted a specialist. He was a very wise man, and his jerky discourse concerned shocked nerve-centres and reflex actions. "That's all right," interrupted the thoroughly startled James (sometime wing three-quarter for the United Services XV.), "but what defeats me is not being able to cross a London street without 'coming over ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... in a jerky way in the midst of plenty of cutting and foining; for, though the Frenchmen did not attempt to pass the doorway, they kept on making fierce thrusts at us, though ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... sort in Mullally's nature that made Henry instinctively angry with him: his vague features, his weak, wandering eyes, peering from behind large glasses, his tow-coloured hair that seemed to have "washed-out," and above all, his squeaky voice that piped on one jerky note.... ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... snail, was entertained by the spectacle of the pursuit. The hunt was up. Short of throwing his head up and baying, the stout young man behaved exactly as a bloodhound in similar circumstances would have conducted itself. He broke into a jerky gallop, attended by his self-appointed associates; and, considering that the young man was so stout, that the messenger boy considered it unprofessional to hurry, that the shop girl had doubts as to whether sprinting was quite ladylike, and that the two Bohemians were ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... a little in his stirrups to get a clearer view through the scanty fringe of vegetation that topped the ridge, one of them rode forward and, dismounting, began to manipulate the fence wires with quick, jerky movements of his hands. ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... these thoughts, he murmured tortured, jerky phrases, unconscious he was giving voice to the ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... more of this jerky letter. Soon I shall proceed to make my contention good. I shall show the higher part intellect plays in conjugal love, the control, restraint, forbearance, sacrifice. And I shall show that conjugal love is higher ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... with that, and turned again, with his jerky suddenness, to his telegrams and letters. The colonel had not meant for Macdonald to pass out of the door through which he had entered. That was the military portal; the other one, opening into the hall from which Frances ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... not hear a word he was saying, after those first jerky sentences. He stood looking past Bill at a drunken Irishman who was making erratic progress up the street; and he was no more conscious of the Irishman than he was of Bill's scorching condemnation of the town ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... is necessary to train the pupil to give clear and expressive emphasis, and at the same time to avoid an unpleasant "jerky" movement of the voice. ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... when there came the sound of jerky footsteps on the terrace behind him and an irascible voice addressed ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... the launch sounded a series of sharp, jerky calls, followed by the firing of a Mauser bullet. Venning's heart was pumping blood at express speed under the violence of his efforts, and his eyes in a wild stare were fixed on the approaching craft, which had now brought its living freight within recognizable ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... feel pretty big. I guess he's not very light, or very dark, but I think he'll be tall and SOME stout. Don't you know how the lawyer that lives on our street looks? Just as if he owned all the houses on the avenue. I think he'll give us a teenty little bow like this," and she gave a jerky little nod, "but I think he'll be quite nice to us ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... What a queer life for a girl to lead!" said the little doctor in jerky tones. "And is she ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... turned again they met Mr. James. He walked with queer, jerky steps, his arms bowed ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... a short, jerky nod for nearly every word, and describing a circle round his crown—as if he were stirring a pint of hot tea—with his forefinger, at ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... Bud was not responding very well, his feeble strokes were jerky and uncoordinated. "Must've lost pressure too fast when his tank ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... discovered that Ling Chu understood English quite as well as he understood Cantonese, and Whiteside was able from time to time to interject a word, or correct some little slip on Tarling's part. The Chinaman listened without comment and when Tarling had finished he made one of his queer jerky bows and went ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... been bitten off round the edge here and there, just at the stiffest zigs and zags of the nightmare road. And far down the mountain the way went winding under our eyes, like the loops of a lasso; short, jerky loops, as we came to each new turn, to which the length of our chassis forced us to bow and curtsey on our slippery, sliding skates. Forward the Aigle had to go until her bonnet hung over the precipice, then to be cautiously ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... coarse, for the first writing of a writing medium is not even a fair specimen of penmanship, being heavy and very difficult to decipher. As his hand wanders here and there, his body may sway and the pencil be brought in contact with the paper. When he begins to write, the strokes are crude and jerky and uncertain. The first notes that he delivers to the sitters are very often difficult to make out, and sometimes it is impossible to tell what they are. But this condition will be gradually overcome until the writing ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... went into the "office," Magnus locking the door behind him. "Very complete you are here, Governor," observed the editor in his alert, jerky manner, his black, bead-like eyes twinkling around the room from behind his glasses. "Telephone, safe, ticker, account-books—well, that's progress, isn't it? Only way to manage a big ranch these days. But the day of the big ranch is over. As the land appreciates ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... lying down: he was standing up with one hand grasping the edge of the bookshelf and the other holding open before his face a thick volume. The lamp wriggled in the gimbals, the loosened books toppled from side to side on the shelf, the long barometer swung in jerky circles, the table altered its slant every moment. In the midst of all this stir and movement Captain MacWhirr, holding on, showed his eyes above the upper edge, and asked, "What's ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... course something did happen. That is why he went back to live in Winesburg and why we know about him. The thing that happened was a woman. It would be that way. He was too happy. Something had to come into his world. Something had to drive him out of the New York room to live out his life an obscure, jerky little figure, bobbing up and down on the streets of an Ohio town at evening when the sun was going down behind the roof of Wesley Moyer's ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... which he gazed in a fixed effort of his eyes, like a man trying to read small print at the full range of human vision. As soon as Willems' feet had left the planks, the silence which had been lifted up by the jerky rattle of his footsteps fell down again upon the courtyard; the silence of the cloudy sky and of the windless air, the sullen silence of the earth oppressed by the aspect of coming turmoil, the silence of the world collecting its faculties to withstand ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... shivered, thinking it was the summons to court. Instead, there stood Freddie Palmer. The instant she looked into his face she became as calm and strong as her impassive expression had been falsely making her seem. Behind him was Black Mustache, his face ghastly, sullen, cowed. Palmer made a jerky motion of head and arm. Pete went; and the door closed and ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... his religious works were really beautiful, but he had strange obsessions. Berlioz greatly admired his master and could not help showing, especially in his earlier works, traces of this admiration. That is the reason for the syncopated and jerky passages without rhyme or reason and which can only be explained by his unconscious imitation of Leuseur's faults. In imitating a model the resemblances occur in the faults and not in the excellences, for the latter are inimitable. So the excellences of the Requiem are not due to ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... miles from camp, and Faye met me there with an ambulance. I was glad enough to get away from that old stage. It was one of the jerky, bob-back-and-forth kind that pitches you off the seat every five minutes. The first two or three times you bump heads with the passenger sitting opposite, you can smile and apologize with some grace, but after a while your hat will not stay in place and your head becomes sensitive, and finally, ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... using the full blade of the saw. Don't acquire the "jerky" style of sawing. If the handle is held loosely, and the saw is at the proper angle, the weight of the saw, together with the placement of the handle on the saw blade, will be found sufficient to make the ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... They were in an old dory, and there was much ice clinging to her, inside and out, as if the fishers had been out for many hours. There were only a few cod lying around in the bottom, already stiffened in the icy air. The wind was light, and one of the men was rowing with short, jerky strokes, to help the sail, while the other held the sheet and steered with a spare oar that had lost most of its blade. The wind came in flaws, chilling, and mischievous in its freaks. "I ain't goin' out any more this year," said the younger man, ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... startled on observing in the wall, in one corner, just under the ceiling, a tiny door fly open, and emerging thence a grotesque, miniature man, holding, uplifted in his hand, a hammer of size proportionate to his own figure. Mr. Norton sat motionless, while this small specimen proceeded, with a jerky gait and many bobbing grimaces, across a wire stretched to the opposite corner of the room, where stood a tall, ebony clock. When within a short distance of the clock another tiny door in its side flew open; the little man entered and struck deliberately ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... ought to have been enough, but Hardman did not appear to think so. He stepped somewhat closer, and he, too, spoke, still gesticulating with one of his hands. The man addressed was impatient. He nodded again in a jerky fashion, and made answer with less caution, as a consequence of which the eavesdropper caught the words, "Yes, ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... the front classroom windows he was to be seen every morning disappearing through the front gates at about eleven o'clock; very shiny top hat; very tight tail coat; very tight grey trousers; very tight yellow gloves; very tight grey-yellow moustache; very tight pasty face; curiously constricted, jerky gait as though his boots, too, were very tight. Precisely the sort of chronic, half-tipsy hanger-on one used to see in billiard rooms or eating cloves in West End bars. By association of ideas with the orientalism ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... break into some good old tune myself, if there hadn't been so much rustling and talking and flirting all around me. As it was, there arose a clatter of confusing sounds that gave one's nerves a jerky feeling that I for one haven't got over yet. I do wonder why city people have no better manners. I should just as soon think of speaking out in meeting, as of chattering when others wanted to ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... plastering it with clay. The top of the chimney was surrounded by a barrel with both ends open, through which the smoke climbed lazily up into the air. Near by stood an oak-tree, in which a jay-bird was screaming and dancing in a jerky way. Sukey then looked away into the blue sky, and the clouds seemed to become pagodas, and palm-trees, and golden ships floating drowsily away. All at once she heard somebody say, in a ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... been justified in describing the imperative duty of work as the theme of many an hour of strenuous idleness, and the superiority of golden silence over silver speech as the text of endless bursts of jerky rapture, while a too constant invective against cant had its usual effect of developing cant with a difference. To the incorrigibly sentimental all this was sheer poison, which continues tenaciously in the system. Others of robuster character no sooner came into contact with the world and its fortifying ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... loss, had already climbed upon a low projection in the wall of one of the houses opposite. From this point of vantage he could more easily observe what went on inside the cabaret, and in short, jerky sentences he gave a description of what he saw to ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... humour, was capable of sinking into a theatrical mannerism and cockney vulgarities of wretched taste; Disraeli, with all his wit and savoir faire, has printed some rank fustian, and much slip-slop gossip; and George Meredith at times can be as jerky and mysterious as a prose Browning. Charlotte Bronte and Kingsley could both descend to blue fire and demoniac incoherences. Macaulay is brilliant and emphatic, but we weary at last of his everlasting staccato on the trumpet; and even the magnificent symphonies ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... Gertie, impressed by his deferential manner. "Only it seemed to me rather odd. And just now my nerves are somewhat jerky." He touched his cap, and was shuffling off, when she recalled him. "Stroll along with me, and let's have a talk. What do ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... above the tight waistband, as fancy took him, and enjoying the warmth of his master's body. It was very interesting and amusing to see him poke his little head out between the buttons, or through a buttonhole of the blouse at intervals to ask, with glittering eye and jerky movement, for an occasional fly from his master's hand caught on the shafts or cover ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... Wilbur Cowan, who was going to war, had invited her to be present that evening at the opening of Newbern's new and gorgeous restaurant, where the diners, between courses and until late after dinner, would dance to the strains of exotic and jerky music, precisely as they did in the ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... first met, it seems, in saddle. The winter weather was glorious at Averill. They had a fine pack of hounds; coursing for jack-rabbit was their favorite sport, and, despite the fact that Foster had a beautiful and speedy horse, "his seat was so poor and his hand so jerky he never managed to get up to the ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... panted Bunny, in a sort of jerky way, for the cart rattled over some bumps just then, and if Bunny had not been careful how he spoke he might have bitten his ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Aunt Lu's City Home • Laura Lee Hope
... parts. The whole is laid upon bands of straw designed to bring out the sounds and render them stronger and purer. The sounds are produced by striking the pieces of wood with a couple of small hammers. They are short and jerky, and, as they cannot be prolonged, nothing but pieces possessing a quick rhythm can be executed upon the instrument. Dances, marches, variations, etc., are played upon it by preference, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... said to possess American characteristics. It is dashing and rapid, and as clear as the water in Southern seas. The man has a penchant for short and nervous sentences, but they are never jerky. They explode like so many firecrackers and remind one of the great national holiday!... Nevertheless Edgar Saltus should have ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... came. You read blunt, jerky sentences that told you Mark had died suddenly, in the mess room, of heart failure. Captain Symonds said he thought you would want to know exactly how it happened.... "Well, we were 'cock-fighting,' if you know what that is, after dinner. Peters is the heaviest ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... Dick saw a long, snake-like head and neck thrust out of the water by the bank. The head twisted about with a quick, jerky motion till the bird's eyes rested on the canoe, when it disappeared as suddenly as it ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... me know when you want some more money. Write to the office, not to the house. I only wish you had asked me before this happened. I've been pretty successful, at least in business; but that's not everything." He paused and then went on, in short, jerky sentences. "Don't marry a saint, Jimmy. They're better to watch than to live with. Your sister never forgives anything, and that's a big mistake. It makes life hard sometimes. I suppose I'm getting a bit old, and I feel things. The doctor says ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... them away with that, and turned again, with his jerky suddenness, to his telegrams and letters. The colonel had not meant for Macdonald to pass out of the door through which he had entered. That was the military portal; the other one, opening into the hall from which Frances came, was the world's door for entering that house. ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... group included four Heavies besides the flagship, with twelve Mediums and twenty Lights. They slanted down in a jerky evasive course while pictures flashed on screens to be compared ...
— Tulan • Carroll Mather Capps
... the red squirrel are quick, sharp, jerky, machine-like. He does nothing slowly or gently; everything with a snap and a jerk. His progression is a series of interrupted sallies. When he pauses on the stone wall he faces this way and that with a sudden ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... into the "office," Magnus locking the door behind him. "Very complete you are here, Governor," observed the editor in his alert, jerky manner, his black, bead-like eyes twinkling around the room from behind his glasses. "Telephone, safe, ticker, account-books—well, that's progress, isn't it? Only way to manage a big ranch these days. But the day of the big ranch is over. As the land appreciates in value, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... You head that pony for camp mighty quick. Ride for it! You will have no difficulty in following my trail back. Don't drink much at a time. Take it in little sips," commanded the foreman in short, jerky sentences. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... the little Hamilton girl trotted importantly forward to the superintendent's table, where she let seven pennies drop from her fat fingers into a yawning frog, receiving in exchange a printed text. Acknowledging this courtesy with a jerky bow, she switched her way back to the pew she had left, and crumpled herself into a space not half wide enough to hold her. The minister rose to lead in prayer. Hannah bowed her head devoutly, trusting in the power of example. ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... into that approved tonsorial ornament known in barrack-room parlance as a "quiff." His complexion was of that peculiar olive-brown shade especially noticeable in most Anglo-Indians. In his smart, soldierly aspect, biting, jerky Cockney speech and clipped, wax-pointed moustache he betrayed unmistakably the ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... lonesome up there all by myself, with nobody to speak to. Besides, not since I was a boy, I reflected, had I enjoyed a run down a really steep hill. I thought I would see if I could revive the sensation. It is a jerky exercise, but good, I ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... to have deserted him, and as he went on with his revelation he spoke in jerky sentences, with some confusion ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... desk by the window, came forward and welcomed him. Glory held his hand with her long hand-clasp and looked steadfastly into his eyes. His face twitched and her own blushed deeply, and then she talked in a nervous and jerky way, reproaching him for ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... husband. He had never complained about her want of good looks, and had never gone after those who were considered good-looking. In expressing this opinion she always first bent forward, then drew herself up to her full length, and finally gave a little jerky nod sideways, so as to clench the statement. Then Ivan's bright eye would twinkle more brightly than usual, and he would ask her how she knew that—reminding her that he was not always at home. This was Ivan's stereotyped mode of teasing his wife, and every time he employed it he was called an "old ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... of the launch sounded a series of sharp, jerky calls, followed by the firing of a Mauser bullet. Venning's heart was pumping blood at express speed under the violence of his efforts, and his eyes in a wild stare were fixed on the approaching craft, which ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... upon him, watching for the least word, the least modulation of the voice. The curiosity-dealer was now laughing, with a nervous laugh, while resuming the self-control of a man who feels sure of himself: and he walked up to Renine with jerky movements ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... found the little dame in possession, and generally the lord and master gleaning food in redstart fashion; flitting around a branch, darting behind a leaf, over and under a twig, tail spread to keep his balance during these jerky movements, his bright oriole colors flashing as he dashed through a patch of sunlight,—a beautiful object, but a perfectly silent one. When his happiness demanded expression he flew to a maple-tree, and poured ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... Dimsdale made a jerky movement, as if pulling himself together. He put an unsteady hand into his breast-pocket. "It came this afternoon, my lady, about an hour ago. I am afraid it's bad news—very bad news. Yes, my lady, I'm telling you, I'm telling you. ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... I've forgotten a little the order in which things happened, for a scene of confusion followed. Stepan Trofimovitch uttered some exclamation in French, clasping his hands, but Varvara Petrovna had no thought for him. Even Mavriky Nikolaevitch muttered some rapid, jerky comment. But Pyotr Stepanovitch was the most excited of all. He was trying desperately with bold gesticulations to persuade Varvara Petrovna of something, but it was a long time before I could make out what it was. He appealed to Praskovya Ivanovna, and Lizaveta Nikolaevna ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... preparatory to and during the utterance there is a tremulous motion about the muscles of the mouth. The hesitation increases, and instead of a steady flow of modulated, articulate sounds, speech is broken up into a succession of irregular, jerky, syllabic fragments, without modulation, and often accompanied by a tremulous vibration of the voice. Syllables are unconsciously dropped out, blurred, or run into one another, or imperfectly uttered; especially is difficulty found with consonants, ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... a favourite hunting-ground of those insect desperadoes, the mason-wasps, that flew about loudly buzzing in their splendid gold and scarlet uniform. There were also many little shy birds here, and my favourite was the wren, for in its appearance and its scolding, jerky, gesticulating ways it is precisely like our house-wren, though it has a richer and more powerful song than the English bird. On the other side of the hedge was the potrero, or paddock, where a milch-cow with two or three horses were kept. ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... dark now and the electric street lamps were lit round the pedestal of the Spanish Duke. The organisation of the town was jerky, and often the lights would come on when it was daylight and often disappear when it was dark. Where Germans had been there were always electric light and telephones. No matter how sparse the furniture ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... wisps of gray to her shoulders. Her eyeglasses dropped from her nose and swayed dizzily on their slender chain. Her gloves split across the back and showed the white, tense knuckles. Her breath came in gasps, and only a moaning "whoa—whoa" fell in jerky rhythm from her white lips. Ashamed, frightened, and dismayed, Miss Prue clung to the reins and kept her straining eyes on the ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... his clothes have fallen on the wet floor; he cannot force his blue toes into his oozy socks. At the moment he is attempting to wriggle himself into his trousers the horse is hitched-to again, and the jerky and jolty journey back up the beach begins. If the hair of a boy of ten could turn white in a single morning, there would be many a hoary-headed youngster in British watering-places. John Leech, in Punch, used to make pictures of the experiences I have outlined, and I studied them with ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... the children and chuckles from some of the older members interfered with Mr. Badger's fervent but jerky discourse. Captain ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the other without moving, "but in the same jerky fashion. Every time I get it, it seems to have gone back to the beginning—just ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... large, with great white cotton coverings, and generally drawn by six mules: the driver, usually a colored man, rides the first nigh mule, and has one rein, called the 'jerky rein,' running over the head of the mule before him, through a ring fastened to his headstall, and dividing on the back of the leader, and fastening to his bit. The mule is directed to one side or another by the driver twitching the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... trees. The brick walls of many of the houses round were pitted and pocked and scarred by the shell fragments. The face of one house was marked by a huge splash, with solid center and a ragged-edged outline of radiating jerky rays, reminding one immediately of a famous ink-maker's advertisement. The bricks had taken the impression of the explosion's splash exactly as paper would take the ink's. Practically every window in the square had been broken, and in the case of ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... was a thin, querulous, and withered-looking little man, who twitched his eyebrows as he spoke, and spoke in short, jerky phrases. ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... not, or I should not have dreamed of asking you to help me to-night," Katherine said, with a nervous laugh; then in a jerky tone she went on: "I want you to get the store shut up as soon as possible, then, directly the people have cleared off, we have got to go and bring those stores home that ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... Aix, and the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and are therefore familiar with Browning's custom of leaving out words, using odd, informal words which another man might think out of place in poetry, and employing strange, sometimes jerky, meters. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... he could into a series of short jerky strokes, using the muscles of his arms, failing altogether to get the weight of his body on the oar. At the end of twenty minutes ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... As they entered the comfortable little sitting-room of the suite, a young woman rose gracefully from the desk at which she had been writing. With perfect composure she smiled and extended her slim hand to the American as he crossed the room with Medcroft's jerky introduction dinging in ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... correcting, judgment of Mr. E. DROOD, I make bold to guess that the modern true lover's mind, such as it is, is rendered jerky by contemplation of the lady who has made him the object of her virgin affectations," proceeded Mr. DIBBLE, looking intently at EDWIN, but still making farther and farther reaches toward the distant crackers, even to the increased tilting of his chair. "I venture the conjecture, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... Catcher (Muscicapa Grisola) is fairly common on our lawns, where it will sit quietly on a garden seat, or roller, and thence take its short jerky flight after the flies. I have known it to nest year after year, at the Vicarage, in a hole in the wall, where an iron ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... the same time pale, a thing which always displeases me and which is, in fact, unpleasant; it impresses me as a sort of diseased healthfulness. Moreover, he had the slow yet jerky way of speaking that characterizes the pedant. Even his manner of walking, which was not that of youth and health, repelled me; as for his glance, it might be said that he had none. I do not know what to think of a man whose eyes have nothing to say. These are the signs which led me to an unfavorable ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Maine woods. Now he was foreman of an East River lumber-yard, and he was prospering. In a year or two he would have enough laid by to go home to Bucksport and buy a share in a ship-building business. All this dribbled out in the course of a jerky but variegated correspondence, in which autobiographic details were mixed ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... you and Ward white," said Stockton. "You'll have good grub. Herky-Jerky's the best cook this side of Holston, and you'll be left untied in the daytime. But if either of you attempts to get away it means a leg shot off. Do you ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... was, so I rolled up my stuff, loaded up Starlight, an' said good-bye to little Barbie. That was the hard part of it. She didn't cry when I told her I was goin'—that would 'a' been too girlish-like for her; she just breathed hard an' jerky for a couple o' minutes while we looked in opposite directions, an' then she said, "How'll you come back next time, Happy? It's over three years ago since you left that other time, an' you came back just as you said, ridin' on a black hoss with silver trimmed ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... left. With a despairing sigh she turns the great faucet of the bath-tub and holds her head under it till she is upon the verge of a watery grave. This experiment is her forlorn hope. Perhaps about three or four o'clock she falls into a series of jerky naps, and dreams that she is editor of a popular Hebrew magazine, wandering frantically through a warehouse full of aspirant MSS. (chiefly from the junior classes of theological seminaries) of which she cannot ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... draw no flour, nor rice, not jerky, anyhow," said the puncher, examining the bags. "Nor bacon, either. The only chance we stand to make a haul is on ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... to be done. They couldn't go on like this.... Her mind went to and fro, quickly, with short jerky movements, distressed; it had to do so much thinking in so ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... Chu understood English quite as well as he understood Cantonese, and Whiteside was able from time to time to interject a word, or correct some little slip on Tarling's part. The Chinaman listened without comment and when Tarling had finished he made one of his queer jerky bows and went ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... of yellow and bluish nimbus I see men encircling the flashing machine and closing in on it. Near to me I make out the silhouette of Mesnil Joseph, who is steering straight and with no effort of concealment for the spot whence the barking explosions come in jerky sequence. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... give all chance for the other lung to work, cheeks are flushed, with anxious expression; the wings of the nostrils move in and out with each breath. The cough is short, dry and painful. Rapid, shallow, jerky breathing, increasing to difficult breathing. On the first day the characteristic expectoration mixed with blood appears (called rusty). Pulse runs from 100 to 116, full bounding, but may be feeble and small in serious cases. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... go. Charlotte looked round the corner of the hood and saw him running with brief, jerky strides. ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... royal mind speedily wearying of all things in turn, he wished the numbers that made up an anthem to be short. So Purcell wasted his time and magnificent thematic material on mere strings of scrappy, jerky sections. The true Purcell touch is on them all, but no sooner has one entered fairly into the spirit of a passage than it is finished. Instrumental interludes—if, indeed, they can be called interludes, for they are as important as the vocal sections—abound, and might almost be curtain-tunes ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... Chicago to work on the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, and he was a part of the art department force of that paper. At that time—and he never seemed to change later even so much as a hair's worth until he died in 1908—he was short, stocky and yet quick and even jerky in his manner, with a bushy, tramp-like "get-up" of hair and beard, most swiftly and astonishingly disposed of at times only to be regrown at others, and always, and intentionally, I am sure, most amusing to contemplate. ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... have been bitten off round the edge here and there, just at the stiffest zigs and zags of the nightmare road. And far down the mountain the way went winding under our eyes, like the loops of a lasso; short, jerky loops, as we came to each new turn, to which the length of our chassis forced us to bow and curtsey on our slippery, sliding skates. Forward the Aigle had to go until her bonnet hung over the precipice, then to be cautiously backed for a foot or two, before she could glide ticklishly down the ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... toes, upheld in the air by naught but her outstretched arms, her face raised in a fleeting attitude in which nothing was visible but the smile, she came quickly forward toward the light, or receded with little jerky steps, so rapid that one constantly expected to hear the crash of glass and see her glide backward up the slope of the broad moonbeam that shone aslant into the studio. There was one fact that imparted a ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... on the other side. Perhaps the old woman has locked this by accident. And perhaps they are not far off. I shake it. A deep, low savage growl follows this, and I hear within two inches of my toes, a series of jerky and inquisitive sniffs. The sniffs say, as it were, "There's no doubt about it, I know you're there;" the growl adds, "Show yourself, and ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... of the elevator is necessary. A jerky movement may change the direction of motion so suddenly as to produce dangerous air stresses upon the surfaces, in which case there is a ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... congregation cannot hear his words. Certainly yes, when the feeling of the speaker behind the phrase makes him enforce his meaning by a suitable movement. In speaking today fewer gestures are indulged in than years ago. There should never be many. Senseless, jerky, agitated pokings and twitchings should be eradicated completely. Insincere flourishes should be inhibited. Beginners should beware of gestures until they become such practised masters of their minds and bodies that physical emphasis may be added to ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... forget it, especially when Charlie's adventures in the Green River under-world cheated it of exercise too long, was remembering it now, and bolting down the hilly little street, settled at last into a jerky and tentative gait with the air of accepting their guidance until it could arrange further plans, but remembering ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... unfortunate tramp, who in the meanwhile had managed to got on to his feet again, made no attempt to get away; probably he thought he would stand but a poor chance. But the man in the shirt had partly recovered his power of speech, and was now blurting out jerky, half—intelligible sentences: ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... know you," Jack broke in with a jerky bow. "Your daughter's a smart gal," he said. "She made everything as clear as daylight t' me. I'm goin' ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... face when she sank into a chair, nor shall I feel again so near like dying as when she suggested that you might have fallen from the train. I sent Hedrick ahead to summon the conductor, but he had hardly left us when the engine whistled sharply and the train began to slow up in a jerky fashion. We were very pale as we looked at each other, for something told us that the stop was unusual. I rushed to the platform meeting Hedrick, who was as much alarmed as I. He said the train had been flagged, and that there must be something wrong. Your aunt came out ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... scolding all the while, and running about with short, jerky movements, trying her best to get out of the room; but the door ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May
... upon his handsome face, and he turned presently to regard his companion with an enquiry which might have been darkly furtive had not the luminous publicity in which he moved rendered the smallest of his mental processes so brilliantly overt. It was immediately plain to Adams that the jerky sentences were shot out at random in order that Perry's slow mind might gain a larger space in which to grope for the word he really wanted. There was something evidently behind it all, and until the situation should disclose itself they walked on in an embarrassed ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... with their old nervous habit, and the answer came in an odd, jerky, half-connected way: "I dunnot know why it should ha' done. I mun be mad, or summat. I nivver had no hope nor nothin': theer nivver wur no reason why I should ha' had. Ay, I mun be wrong somehow, or it wouldna stick to me i' this road. I conna get rid on it, an' I conna feel as if I want to. ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... have their moments of depression. R. Jones' face clouded, and jerky remarks about hardness of times and losses on the Stock Exchange began to proceed from him. As Scotland Yard had discovered, he lent money on occasion; but he did not lend it to youths in Freddie's ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... obstacle grazing against or bumping the side of the yacht. He looked, and saw, to his surprise, a small rowing boat close under the gunwale, so close indeed that the slow motion of the tide heaved it every now and then into a jerky collision with the lower framework of the Eulalie—a circumstance which explained the sound which had attracted his attention. The boat was not unoccupied—there was some one in it lying straight across the seats, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... in and took her by both hands, and gave her the most friendly greeting. "I heard Elinor's voice, and I stopped in the middle of my sermon," he said. "You will remark in church on Sunday a jerky piece, which shows how I stopped to reflect whether it could be you—and then went on for another sentence, and then decided that it must be you. There is a big Elinor written across my sermon paper." He laughed, ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... had settled over the land, Eben left the boat and made his way slowly up the track. Reaching the main highway, he moved forward with a long jerky stride until he came to the little clearing where the Dobbins' shack was situated. He stopped and peered cautiously around. A light shone from the one window facing the road, and toward this Eben stealthily moved. There was no blind to the window, ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... that caused him to bite his lips to bleeding-point, to keep back his groans, Frobisher contrived to raise himself to a sitting posture, and he then discovered that he was in a closed litter of some sort, or palanquin, which, he could tell by its short, jerky motion, was being borne over very ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... on his lips—Old Tom Peters—Old Jack Summers—Old Bob—Old Dick. Good fellows every one. All the pet names in the family had been his. To him belonged Pippa and Sancie, Melot and Vicky. "My girls," or "My rascals," he used to call them to Tom Peters or Jack Summers, and bring them home jerky little tin pedestrians from the city, or emus pulling little carts; or (later on) bowls of goldfish or violet nosegays from Covent Garden. If he had a nearer passion, it was to stand well with all the world. That's two passions, however, to his score; and the struggle ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... thing we haven't got is meat," Bill told her, "except a little jerky; but there's plenty of that in the woods if we can just find it. And I don't intend to delay about that. If the snow gets much deeper, we'd have to have snowshoes to hunt ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... think that London has agreed with you," rumbled Selwyn discontentedly. "Your pulse is as jerky as a primitive cinema film. You'd better not be in such a hurry to run away from us again. Besides, we can't do without you, ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... another lover present—the favoured lover. He sat with Alice near the piano where Francie and her governess were playing duets, listening without listening to his companion's jerky talk—those pathetic attempts to attract him which so many second-rate girls were not too proud to make obvious to his keen apprehension. Claud Dalzell's distinction was that he was the most polished young man of his social ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... bravado. The bibacious drongo can be as demure as any. When he comes to dart among the eddying insects, glorying in the first cool gleams of the sunshine, he will take his ease on a mango branch, make jerky bows and flick the fine feathers of his tail, and "cheep" in timorous accents. He is sober then, quite parsonified in demeanour; his speech "all in the set phrase of peace," and would be scandalised by the mere ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... her back in the morning," proffered Dick after a few moments. Then, as this elicited no remark, "We can stock her up with jerky, and there's no reason she shouldn't make it." Sam remained grimly silent. "Is there?" insisted Dick. He waited a minute for a reply. Then, as none came, "Hell!" he exclaimed, disgustedly, and turned away to sit on a log the other side of the fire with all ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... with his helmet tossed backwards on his shaggy head, his heavy kit swinging in disordered fashion from his shoulders, his mouth open, shouting meaningless things to the passers-by, and his steps very short, jerky and unsteady. Thus it happened, that many people, seeing him in this condition, shuddered, and asked what France had come to, when she must place her faith in such men as that. Other people, however, ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... with the lieutenant in the peopleless city of Belgrade and waited for his captors. They came then, timidly reassured by his non-violence. While he talked to them pleasantly the citizens of London and Paris suddenly began to dance jerky and grotesque jigs on the pavements of their cities. In the same moment the Chief Justice of the Court of the Nations, at a cocktail party in Washington, writhed in the exquisite pain of total muscle cramp, his august features twisted into a mask of ...
— The Mightiest Man • Patrick Fahy
... rising. Stiffly, she put Baby Newcomb back into his basket. As she did so, a ripple of shrill, jerky laughter crackled through the room. Lorry put her hands to her ears. "You know I can't say anything. You'd keep quiet. They'd ...
— I'll Kill You Tomorrow • Helen Huber
... One wound itself around the front leg of my mule, and for a moment I was anxious lest the animal had been bitten; but fortunately the snake, which had been trodden upon, did no damage. Only rarely did we see a bird anywhere, except in villages, where an occasional crow, with its dried-up neck and jerky motions, could be seen. How like ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Jerky, little by little, Wilfred sketches out the answer. Army life wasn't what he'd expected. Not at all. He was sore on the whole business. He'd been let in for it, that was all. It wasn't so bad for some of the fellows, but they'd been lucky. As for him—well, he'd come ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... your outfit somewhere back on the trail," he said eagerly. "I'll go back with you; and we can talk things over quietly there!" He actually started toward the watercourse, walking with jerky, uneven steps. ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... the drawing room where I am writing, and are playing, one the fiddle, and the other the guitar. Perhaps they are trying to get up a "hop," later, but there do not seem materials enough for it, and their tune is at present squeaky—jerky—with an attempt at an adagio. The nigger is now playing "Comin' thro' the Rye," with much expression, both of face and fiddle! Oh, such, squeaks! I wish Louisa heard them. Here come the variations with accompaniment ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... brain scream with the immensity of the sound. Luminous, white disks, three feet in diameter, glared at him, and the creature, which progressed with jerky leaps toward him, almost filled ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... he finished his jerky sentences, pointed to an eminence which was two or three hundred yards from where they stood, and a like distance from the wall ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... on, so as to keep his charge under constant survey. Even in that moment of acute despair he arrested Robert's attention. There was something odd about him—something distressful and indignant. Whilst he prayed he made jerky, irritable movements which fluttered out the wings of his gown, so that with his sleek black hair and pointed face he looked like a large angry blackbird, trapped and tied by ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... ago. I next place in the cage a bluebottle, one only, to avoid confusion. Her fat belly proclaims the advent of a laying time. An hour later, when the excitement of being put in prison is allayed, my captive is in labor. With eager, jerky steps, she explores the morsel of game, goes from the head to the tail, returns from the tail to the head, repeats the action several times and at last settles near an eye, a dimmed eye ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... down in two minutes, Syd, I'm off," said I, pulling out my watch, and nervously noting the jerky springs of the spidery second-hand that seemed to be in a ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... drive fast, and while the horses trotted rapidly along the Rue Royale and the boulevards, she told what had happened to Nana in jerky, breathless sentences. ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... glittering, mineralogical flavour. The verse is not so much easy as facile. And not all the grace of internals can atone for external monotony. That trick—that full stop at the end of nearly every fourth line—it impairs the charm of the music and renders its flow jerky; coming, as it does, like an ever-repeated blow, it grows wearisome to the ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... sinking to repose, Marcella felt herself a naked soul, alone on a wide sea, with shapes of pain and agony and revolt. She looked at the sleeping wife. "He, too, is probably asleep," she thought, remembering some information which a kindly warder had given her in a few jerky, well-meant sentences, while she was waiting downstairs in the gaol for Minta Hurd. "Incredible! only so many hours, minutes left—so far as any mortal knows—of living, thinking, recollecting, of all that makes us something as against the nothing of ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a mass of somewhat jerky, contradictory information, had gleaned that the new leading part at the London theatre had been gained through the middle-aged bridegroom's influence, her ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... slowed down, in a jerky, hiccoughy sort of way, and crept on till the car in which Mr. Graves was seated was abreast the lighted windows of a small station, where it stopped. Peering through the water-streaked pane at the end of his seat, the lawyer saw dim silhouettes of uncertain outline moving about. They moved with ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... (de la Meuse): "Anecdotes relatives a la Revolution." "He was dressed like a tough cab-driver. He had a disturbed look and an eye always in motion; he acted in an abrupt, quick and jerky way. A constant restlessness gave a convulsive contraction to his muscles and features which likewise affected his manner of walking so that ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... you musn't worry! Reuben Olmstead's a good sailor yet, and, better than all, a good man. His Father will look after him more tenderly than you can," giving her cap an odd little jerky nod, which caused the parrot ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... the Whistle,'" said the musician seriously, and at once struck up a jerky Frankish tune, with eyes intently fixed on the Emir, garnering his every smile and sign of pleasure. When his Honour showed a disposition to sing the words of the refrain, he played more loudly than before in triumph. All present flung back their heads and bawled in discord, producing a din ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... occasion. Arrayed in superb raiment, with his opera hat under his arm, he concluded his self-examination hopefully, awaited the arrival of Miss Podsnap, and talked small-talk with Mrs Lammle. In facetious homage to the smallness of his talk, and the jerky nature of his manners, Fledgeby's familiars had agreed to confer upon him (behind his back) the honorary title of ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... except that he was staying at the Parador de las Diligencias, and would call in a week's time. He left his card—Mr. Osmund Manvers, Filcote Hall, Taunton; Oxford and Cambridge Club—elegantly engraved. And then he departed, with a jerky salute to Don Luis, ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... toucan, with its enormous scarlet and yellow beak, would suddenly appear and fly up with peculiar jerky swoops, at the same time uttering its yelping cry. Several times I saw light green lizards of from three to four feet in length stretched out on branches of dead trees and staring ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... the religious developement of the British mind becomes strangely jerky and irregular. The arrival of Sunday is suddenly revealed to the group round the breakfast-table by the severity with which the spinster's eye is fixed on an announcement over the stove that the English service in the hotel is at ten o'clock. But the announcement ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... pay or not before Moll's succession is made sure. And I have good reason to fear they will not, for I observed yesterday when I called upon Farmer Giles to invite him to our feast, he seemed very jerky and ill at ease, which perplexed me greatly, until, on quitting, I perceived through a door that stood ajar old Simon seated in a side room. And 'tis but natural that if they find prudent excuse for withholding their rents they will keep their money in pocket, which ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... of twenty or more birds flew over; some were the bright-yellow males and others the more plainly colored females. They did not fly straight, but in a jerky way, constantly dropping down and then lifting up again, and calling out "wait for me" on every down-grade curve, until by common consent they alighted among some wild grasses, where the early yellow thistles were already going ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... replied the person addressed as Bob. He spoke in short, jerky sentences. He was dressed as a seafaring man; had wide, helpless-looking brown eyes, an apologetic smile, and a bass voice of appalling depth and power. "Boat's aground," he repeated, seating himself on the ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... remained silent, tapping the gravel path with her satin slippers. After a few minutes she sat up, moved her arms about in an unconscious way as though she were scarcely awake, then quickly, and in a jerky way, she put her hand between her dress and waistband, pressing the back of her hand against the ribbon as though she were going to burst it. Finally she rose and began ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... all very dream-like and strange: the awful, overwhelming, crushing sound of the wind seemed to press upon my brain so that I could not for a long time think, only lie and try to breathe without catching each inspiration in a jerky, spasmodic way. ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... suggestions. Food—and a bath! What he wouldn't give for a bath! Hay to sleep on was fine; he had had far worse beds during the past four years. But a hot bath to be followed by a meal which was not the jerky, corn meal, bitter coffee of trail cooking! His pace quickened into a trot but slackened again as he neared the Four Jacks and remembered all the precautions he must take ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... reached simultaneously with the word "suddenly" that when Mr. Logan got that note he thought it was "severely," and that the bad penmanship and generally disgraceful appearance of the loose-leaf sheet, the jerky hand, and the rather elderly envelope which was all Francis could find—it had been living in a pocket with many other things for some time—gave him a wrong idea. Mr. Logan, to anticipate a little, by this erroneous means, acquired an idea very near the truth. He thought that Marjorie Ellison ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... her; watch her like a cat, or she'll get away from you. When she fights strong and the tiller slips a little, in a jerky, greasy sort of way, let up on her a trifle; it is the way she tells you at night that the water is too shoal; but keep edging her up, little by little, toward the point. You are well up on the bar, now; there is a bar under every point, because the water that comes down around ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... yourself, Thanny," said his father kindly, "and do not speak your syllables in that jerky manner." ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... seafaring men. It provided them with a wealth of facilities for the expeditious disposal of money that had been earned at great hazard, and not infrequently by the sweat of anguish. One chilly November morning a sailor was walking down the Highway. His step was jerky and uncertain, for his feet were bare; his sole articles of dress consisted of a cotton shirt and a pair of trousers that seemed large enough to take another person inside of them. These were kept from dropping off by what is known as a soul-and-body lashing—that ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... position long enough to allow any moisture outside the tube to run down, and then the liquid is allowed to run out to the level of the upper mark; this is easily effected by lessening the pressure. If the finger is wet, the flow will be jerky, and good work impossible. The pipette is next held over the vessel into which the 100 c.c. are to be put, and the liquid allowed to run out. When the bulb is nearly empty, the flow should be checked by replacing ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... pursued, she proved herself no agreeable companion, and laid aside the respectful tone and manner with which she had hitherto treated Miss Trevor, till the old lady began to feel uneasy in her turn, and her manner and speech became more queer, jerky, and confused ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... aside their thanks and drew up the one chair in the room, talking all the time in his quick, jerky fashion. ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... can almost tell whether or not, in the week of its composition, I was reading good literature. In the former case the language is apt to be full and harmonious, and sprinkled over with gay flowers of maxim and illustration, whereas in the latter the style of the performance is apt to be bald and jerky.[35] ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... it is too jerky, and her voice is too loud," returned Dot; but his countenance smoothed when I got the book and read to him, and soon he fell into ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... upper row where several teeth at some time had been knocked out. He breathed stertorously, at times grunting and moaning with the pain of his sleep. Also, he was very restless, tossing his arms about, making jerky, half-convulsive movements, and at times rolling his head from side to side in the burrs. This restlessness seemed occasioned partly by some internal discomfort, and partly by the sun that streamed down on ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... you think I'm going to do?" Nelson was on his feet now and pacing his office with jerky strides. "Take a loss like that?" He paused and glared at the bearer of bad tidings, then growled: "What are you grinning about? Oh, you needn't say it. You want yours, eh? Is ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... bewilderment the Fire Eater leaped upon the flat plain, made insulting gestures and shouted defiant words in his own language at the flashing guns. Above the turmoil could be heard the harsh, jerky voice which came from the bowels of the warrior rather than from his lips. No bullet found him as he stepped back into cover, more composed than when he had gone out. The nervous thrill had expanded itself in the speech. To his ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... monster was walking with long, jerky strides. The pressure against his ribs brought a gasp of agony from his lips. Each jarring step was an individual and excruciating torture. His breath was cut off by the relentless constriction of one of the tentacles which now encircled his neck. ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... man in doing so, that his ideas of literature and my own are entirely dissimilar. Possibly his book has had a little larger sale than mine, but that makes no difference. When I write a book it must engage the interest of the reader, and show some plot to it. It must not be jerky in its style ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... merrily enough, if in a somewhat jerky fashion, but Martin attempted no talk. Only as he proceeded he was heard to mutter between his teeth, "Lucky the Pastor Arentz can't see us now. He would never understand, he is so one-sided." So at least Foy declared ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... his nervous, jerky fashion, 'that is not the proper way from your schoolroom to ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... his head a short, jerky nod for nearly every word, and describing a circle round his crown—as if he were stirring a pint of hot tea—with his forefinger, at the ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... traffic, because, as soon as an extra strain is to be met, there is always the resource of coupling up fresh batteries held in reserve—a process which amounts to the same as yoking new horses to the vehicle in order to take it up a hill. In practice, however, it is found that the jerky vibratory motion of the gasoline automobile provides for this in a way almost as convenient, although not ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... pauses and awkward silences, and then, at what should have been the supreme moment, the lady in white had asked for a cigarette. And the two hasty little kisses that had a sort of perfunctory air, and the queer, jerky "good-byes," and the last stop near the door of the hotel—it all had an air of being very badly done. It could not have been a success on the stage, ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... there alone, when she had come out for the sole purpose of not being alone; but the will to do anything else had suddenly forsaken her. Her mind, however, had become curiously active all at once, in a jerky, disconnected sort of way. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... engaged in composition, he walks about the room, sometimes excitedly, his mind engrossed with his subject, until he has composed an entire paragraph, when he sits down and writes it, never retouching, nor composing sentence by sentence, which he thinks has a tendency to give an abrupt and jerky effect to what is written. Traces of this, he thinks, may ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... spiders, it was a favourite hunting-ground of those insect desperadoes, the mason-wasps, that flew about loudly buzzing in their splendid gold and scarlet uniform. There were also many little shy birds here, and my favourite was the wren, for in its appearance and its scolding, jerky, gesticulating ways it is precisely like our house-wren, though it has a richer and more powerful song than the English bird. On the other side of the hedge was the potrero, or paddock, where a milch-cow with two ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... point of her parasol. She had no notion why she was lingering there alone, when she had come out for the sole purpose of not being alone; but the will to do anything else had suddenly forsaken her. Her mind, however, had become curiously active all at once, in a jerky, disconnected sort of way. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... company of dapper Japanese gentlemen, who were seeing Europe. After much pushing, crowding, shouting, and gesticulation on the part of both the public and officials, the train at last started and pursued its jolting and jerky way. It ran first through the poorer district of Naples, where dilapidated houses, whose faded walls showed traces of former gay pink, blue, or yellow color-wash, stood in the midst of vegetable gardens; then, the slums ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... you?" he ejaculated in short, jerky accents after a pause, evidently puzzled for the nonce, and, in his agitation, another fistful of snuff got arrested half-way between his waistcoat pocket and expectant nose, the consequence of which was that more than half was spilt on the ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... away, and seemingly on slightly higher ground, a light was shining, and a second light moved with a curious jerky motion ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... not a woman given to jerky conversations, interspersed with exclamation points. Her poise and balance had become a proverb in the business world. Yet her lips were trembling now. Her eyes were very round and bright. Her face had flushed, then grown white. Her voice shook a ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... sparkle of the moonlight on the water brought no such sensations of exquisite pleasure, as when the sunshine played over the polished steel of a corselet on Hawberk's knee. I watched the bats darting and turning above the water plants in the fountain basin, but their rapid, jerky flight set my nerves on edge, and I went away again to walk aimlessly to ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... the Dorking Hen, as she strutted around the poultry-yard. She held her head very high, and paused every few minutes to look around in her jerky way and see whether the other fowls were listening. Once she even stood on her left foot right in the pathway of the Shanghai Cock, and cackled into his ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... the auctioneer's crier, with jerky shakes of his head as he cast a sweeping glance at those ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... of wood-thrushes, I am sure would prove delightful friends on a close acquaintance; they are very individual, not only in the extraordinary domed mud nests they build, but in all their ways, in their bright alertness; their interest in and curiosity about whatever goes on, their rather jerky quickness of movement, and their loud and varied calls. With a little encouragement they become tame and familiar. The parakeets were too noisy, but otherwise were most attractive little birds, as ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... in cleverness. Between the hunger that he often suffered, and the persistent tertian fevers, he was very thin and his complexion was citreous. He was not, like his father, deformed, but slender, delicate, with sparkling eyes and rapid, jerky motions. He looked, as the saying is, like ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... looked quickly at her father, and saw that his face had undergone a remarkable change. He was sitting motionless, clutching his cigar between the fingers of his right hand. Presently, his lips moved and he spoke in short, jerky sentences. ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... say that I have been talking with Aunt Mary, and about you," I continued in a grieved tone, for I do not like jerky responses, "I wish you to understand that it was in connection with no ordinary topic. Phyllis,"—I spoke with the utmost tenderness—"can you not guess the nature ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... have deserted him, and as he went on with his revelation he spoke in jerky sentences, with some confusion ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... other monosyllables; but when the editor, who knew the cash price of "peuh" and "oh," declared he would only pay for lines half full, Grimaud was slaughtered the next morning. However, these yarns show that the French can satirize their jerky, staccato style of feuilleton, with each sentence staked off in a paragraph by itself, like some grimacing clown, who expects each particular joke or handspring to be observed individually, and to be greeted with separate applause. Across the channel we of course find the English journals going ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... had clearly not assumed. Another broke away from the harsh notes around in soft diapasons, and with a mellifluous soprano which I instinctively knew must belong to a throat that could sing. Was it Nilsson? Just over my head was a jerky croak of a snore, sounding at intervals of half a minute, as if it had retired on half-pay and longed to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... have an abrupt and jerky ending. It is not uncommon especially in class room debate, to hear a student at the close of his discussion say, "This is my proof; I leave the decision to the judges"; or "Thus you see I have established my proposition." Such an ending can in no ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... deep gulping sigh of relief, flashed across the room on tiptoe, and went down on his knees beside the monstrous thing, moving the candle this way and that along the length of it, as if searching for something, and laughing in little jerky gasps of relief when he found nothing that was not as it had been—as it should be—as he wanted it to be. And then, as he rose and patted the clay, and laughed aloud as he realized how hard it had set, then, at that instant, a white shape lurched forward and swooped downward, ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... air; then, standing upon her slender toes, upheld in the air by naught but her outstretched arms, her face raised in a fleeting attitude in which nothing was visible but the smile, she came quickly forward toward the light, or receded with little jerky steps, so rapid that one constantly expected to hear the crash of glass and see her glide backward up the slope of the broad moonbeam that shone aslant into the studio. There was one fact that imparted a strange, poetic charm to that fantastic ballet, and that was ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... up, with a jerky "Thank you, sir," striving with momentary ill-success to get a lackey's mask ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... beside her, wrapped her up with a big cloak, and holding an umbrella over her head, cried: "Quick, Denis, let us be off." The young man climbed up beside his mother and whipped up the horse, whose jerky pace made the two women ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Judge," said Morgan, scaring up a little jerky laugh, "and it got me goin' right! It stuck to me till I got on that train and headed for this town, and I'll hear the ring of it in my ear ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... me one day—he called me Punch because in early life I had a squeaky voice and a jerky manner—"Punch, my boy, get into a habit of looking up, if you can, as you trot along through this world. If you keep your head down and your eyes on the ground, you'll see nothing of what's going on around you—consequently you'll know nothing; moreover, you'll get a bad habit of turning your ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... molasses candy for her because they happened to be born on the same day of the month. And then he played the fiddle until almost one o'clock. He played all the simple, sweet, old-time pieces, in rather a squeaky, jerky way, I am afraid, but the music suited the ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... in a corner from which through a hole where the tiles had fallen off the roof, they could see down into the barnyard, where white and speckled chickens pecked about with jerky movements. A middle-aged woman stood in the doorway of the house looking suspiciously at the files of khaki-clad soldiers that shuffled slowly into the barns by ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... at first betrayed abyssmal ignorance of all save the virtues of stuffed crocodiles, but convinced at last that this was no trap, but a genuine situation from which he could profit, his greed overcame his native caution, and through the aid of his jerky English and Billy's jagged Arabic a certain measure ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... who was a little, dry, jerky woman whose skin creaked when she rubbed it, whose voice scratched and whose whole personality suggested the rasp of saw-filing, was in her own confession actuated by less ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... melancholy dark eyes. I am supposed to look like him, I believe. He, too, spoke to me that evening about Rosalind's engagement. I remember how he walked up and down the dining-room, with his hands behind him and his head bent forward, and his quick, nervous, jerky movements. ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... which the motorman ran the car, and the jerky way in which he stopped and started it, did not bother Nan Sherwood much, for she was not nervous. Miss March, however, began to stare ahead apprehensively, and the way in which she twisted her pocket-handkerchief ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... had only emphasized the quiet. And, with every moment that went by, the lit-up tower had seemed more like a symbol to Dion. Then at last the cuckoo-clock had chimed and the wooden bird, with trembling tail, had made its jerky obeisance. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... reading over, "birthdays" were called for, and the little Hamilton girl trotted importantly forward to the superintendent's table, where she let seven pennies drop from her fat fingers into a yawning frog, receiving in exchange a printed text. Acknowledging this courtesy with a jerky bow, she switched her way back to the pew she had left, and crumpled herself into a space not half wide enough to hold her. The minister rose to lead in prayer. Hannah bowed her head devoutly, trusting in the power of example. She was conscious of ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... seemed to brace herself for an effort; I heard nothing except "I think you should consult me," but our quick children's eyes apprehended the meaning of the scene. Krak was being bearded. There was no doubt of it; for presently Krak bowed her head in a jerky unwilling nod and walked out of the room. My mother stood still for a moment with a vivid red colour in her cheeks. Then she walked across to Victoria, lifted one of her hands from the ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... an hour she had felt the relief of gliding through the mountains without the strain of piloting, the comfort of having the unseen, mysterious engineer up ahead automatically drive for her. She had caroled to her father about nearing the Pacific. Her nervousness had expressed itself in jerky gaiety. ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... attention to Parmalee's talk, which was thrown at me in jerky, desultory sentences, and interested me not at all. I went on with my work of investigation, and though I did not get down on my knees and examine every square inch of the carpet with a lens, yet I thoroughly ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... pounds the book so hard that the congregation cannot hear his words. Certainly yes, when the feeling of the speaker behind the phrase makes him enforce his meaning by a suitable movement. In speaking today fewer gestures are indulged in than years ago. There should never be many. Senseless, jerky, agitated pokings and twitchings should be eradicated completely. Insincere flourishes should be inhibited. Beginners should beware of gestures until they become such practised masters of their minds and bodies that physical emphasis may be added to ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... her like a cat, or she'll get away from you. When she fights strong and the tiller slips a little, in a jerky, greasy sort of way, let up on her a trifle; it is the way she tells you at night that the water is too shoal; but keep edging her up, little by little, toward the point. You are well up on the bar, now; there is a bar under every point, because the water ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... One seared his thigh. Owing, however, either to sheer good fortune or to his jerky ascent, he reached the top of the ladder without ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... his chair again, but only for a moment; then, drawing himself up, he hurried toward the door with a jerky step. ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... before had the awful experience of being chased by a motor-car. It darted in at the open door of the lodge; the pursuers pulled up outside. There were paraffin lamps in the windows, the open door was garlanded with evergreens; from it proceeded loud and hilarious voices and the jerky strains of a concertina. Mrs. Alexander, with all, her most cherished convictions toppling on their pedestals, stood in the open doorway and stared, unable to believe the testimony of her own eyes. Was that the immaculate Barnet seated ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... in preparing stories to begin with detail work, often a gesture or side issue which one has remembered from hearing a story told, but if this is done before the contemplative period, only scrappy, jerky and ineffective results are obtained, on which one cannot count for dramatic effects. This kind of preparation reminds one of a young peasant woman who was taken to see a performance of "Wilhelm Tell," and when questioned as to the plot ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... General Tenby, and about twenty minutes past the hour wheels rattled on the gravel of the short carriage-drive, and the General drove up to the door. He was a tall, soldierly-looking man of between fifty and sixty, with a red face and a keen blue eye, and a precise, jerky manner. ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... flabby sort in Mullally's nature that made Henry instinctively angry with him: his vague features, his weak, wandering eyes, peering from behind large glasses, his tow-coloured hair that seemed to have "washed-out," and above all, his squeaky voice that piped on one jerky note.... ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... engine; or an electrical apparatus; or a clock; or a sewing machine; or anything for spinning, carding, or weaving—nothing that is adapted to any useful labor. These heavy weights, that have fallen on the floor, would give the works a kind of jerky motion for a few seconds, while the weights were descending. Nothing more. But the ultimate purpose of the ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... paper across the table in silence. The room seemed to her to have grown very still. She could hear the flies buzzing on the panes, the soft purr of the wind about the low eaves and through the apple boughs, the jerky beating of her own heart. She felt frightened ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Macquarrie, who was correcting long slips of printer's proofs at a desk by the window, came forward and welcomed him. Glory held his hand with her long hand-clasp and looked steadfastly into his eyes. His face twitched and her own blushed deeply, and then she talked in a nervous and jerky way, reproaching him for his neglect ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... moved with their old nervous habit, and the answer came in an odd, jerky, half-connected way: "I dunnot know why it should ha' done. I mun be mad, or summat. I nivver had no hope nor nothin': theer nivver wur no reason why I should ha' had. Ay, I mun be wrong somehow, or it wouldna stick to me i' this road. I conna get rid on it, an' I conna feel ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... his head with a little jerk over it—that was not all, however, for, as if desirous of dislocating his neck, he repeated the performance with a second handshake. This was extra politeness on his part—two handshakes, two jerky bows; all ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... one of those pesky blowfish. But all of a sudden my line cut through the water and fairly whistled. I wound in the slack and then felt a heavy fish. He made a short plunge and then a longer one, straight out, making my reel scream. I was afraid to thumb the line, so I let him go. With these jerky plunges he ran about three hundred feet. Then I felt my line get fast, and, handing my rod to R. C., I slipped off my shoes and went overboard. I waded out, winding as I went, to find that the bonefish had fouled the line on ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... conscious before the eyes of the men, all of whom he knew by sight or by name, and not one of whom he had ever met before. But they all shook hands after it was over, and the assistant organist played the Wedding March, and one of the club men insisted in pulling a cheerful and jerky peal on the church bell in the absence of the janitor, and then Van Bibber hurled an old shoe and a handful of rice—which he had thoughtfully collected from the chef at the club—after them as they drove ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... ask if she was about the house," Henley made reply, in a jerky sort of fashion. "There is a little matter I wanted ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... matter of only four blocks to the temple. But they were late, and so they hurried, and there was little conversation. Fanny's arm was tucked comfortably in his. It felt, somehow, startlingly thin, that arm. And as they hurried along there was a jerky feebleness about his gait. It was with difficulty that Fanny restrained herself from supporting him when they came to a rough bit of walk or a sudden step. Something fine in her prompted her not to. But the alert mind in ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... one hour's furlough was passed; and then General Feversham, himself jogged by the unlucky mention of a name, suddenly blurted out in his jerky fashion:— ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... raise a golf club with a jerky, uneven stroke, and come down on the helpless turf with the head of it, as if beating a carpet, has always given me a chill and a sensation of wild rage, but there is something about the way Miss Harding does this which is actually artistic. There are combinations of discords ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... down the path with long strides, her garments blowing back. At three paces from the sleigh she halted and called to him in a voice so clear and unrestrained that Raven thought Tenney, coming on with his jerky action, might ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... no means," protested Varin, in a rough, jerky voice that reminded me of his brother, "on the contrary, it was your ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... Diane on the back the man bustled out in his jerky fashion, leaving her weeping over the ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... Judge Wetherell had been dozing peacefully for several hours. Even Pepperill could not avoid a decorous smile. Then the clerk pulled out the copy of Al-Hoda and rustled it, and His Honor, who had been dreaming that he was riding through the narrow streets of Bagdad upon a jerky white dromedary so tall that he could peek through the latticed balconies at the plump, black-eyed odalisques within the harems, slowly came back ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... from camp, and Faye met me there with an ambulance. I was glad enough to get away from that old stage. It was one of the jerky, bob-back-and-forth kind that pitches you off the seat every five minutes. The first two or three times you bump heads with the passenger sitting opposite, you can smile and apologize with some grace, ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... here into discourse about the affairs of his parish, which comprised all the Protestant inhabitants of the island. His voice went on in the cheerful, jerky, matter-of-fact tone in which he always talked. Caius did not pay much heed, except that admiration for the sweet spirit of the man and for the pluck and hardihood with which he carried on his work, grew in him in spite of his heedlessness, for there was nothing that Pembroke suspected ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... falling and the stars were shining through detached clouds. We were soon getting our breakfast, which always consisted of tea, followed by pemmican. We soaked our biscuits in both. Then we set to work to dig out the sledges and tent, a big job taking several hours. At last we got started. In that jerky way in which I was still managing to jot a few sentences down each night as a record, ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... remained stationary after it had risen a few inches from its bed, but the other end, which was nearest us, went up and up, pushed by some screwjack arrangement that lifted it with slow, jerky movements till it was nearly upright. The moonlight fell upon the under surface that was turned toward us, and we understood the manner in which Leith's friends had arranged for us to make our exit from this world. The bottom of the stone slab had been carved into a perfect representation ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... yet was so broad and strong that he hardly looked over the medium height. He had blue eyes and a heavy moustache just tinged with red. His hair was close-cut and dark; his forehead, nose and chin wore large and strong; his lips were strangely like a woman's. He walked with short jerky steps, swinging himself awkwardly as men do who have been much in the saddle. He wore a white shirt, as being holiday-making, but had not managed a collar; his pants were dark-blue, slightly belled; his coat, dark-brown; his boots wore highly polished; ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... was a good-looking, rather vulgar-looking man. At a distance—say ten yards—his height, figure, and carriage gave him somewhat of a commanding appearance, but this was rather marred by a jerky, twitchy, uneasy sort of air, that too plainly showed he was not the natural, or what the lower orders call the real gentleman. Not that Sponge was shy. Far from it. He never hesitated about offering to a lady after a three days' acquaintance, or ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... wagons are large, with great white cotton coverings, and generally drawn by six mules: the driver, usually a colored man, rides the first nigh mule, and has one rein, called the 'jerky rein,' running over the head of the mule before him, through a ring fastened to his headstall, and dividing on the back of the leader, and fastening to his bit. The mule is directed to one side or another by the driver ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... The jerky movements of her short arms and the puffing of her fat little body diffused through the passage a sense of noisy gleefulness which made people say in every box, 'Here's Madame Ancelin!' On Tuesdays especially, the fashionable ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... towards the stair-head. The passage was empty and ended in utter darkness. I glanced the other way, and thought I saw—though not distinctly—in the distance a white figure, not gliding in the conventional way, but limping off, with a sort of jerky motion, and, in a second or two, quite lost ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... up under the influence of speed. The wind was howling now, and conversation was impossible, except in short, jerky sentences. They were on the high level of the prairie and were getting the full benefit of the open sweep ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... The habit of constantly expectorating, which so many Boers have, he has never lost. He is quite ignorant of conversation in the ordinary acceptation of the word; he is an autocrat in all his ways, and has a habit of almost throwing short, jerky sentences at you generally allegorical in form, or partaking largely of scriptural quotations—or misquotations quite as often. Like most of the Boers, the Bible is his only literature—that book he certainly studies a good deal, and his religion is a very large part ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... that day had become used to it, as eyes have since become used to fashions no prettier, and as Mrs. Hawthorne's hair was of a soft sunny tint it was that evening admired by more than one, as was her intrinsically ugly beautiful gown, which gave a little jerky rebound every time she placed one of those neat solid satin-shod feet before the other in her progress across ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... the locker in the bows, and then began to toss out the water like a jerky cascade, Max watching him wildly, but, to his great relief, seeing the water begin ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... Lucetta, the difficulty of explaining herself satisfactorily to the pondering one beside her growing more apparent at each syllable. "You remember that trying case of conscience I told you of some time ago—about the first lover and the second lover?" She let out in jerky phrases a leading word or two of the ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... with her trumpet violently engaged in receiving refreshment. But conversation was not quite so varied as usual, for there was an attitude of intense expectation about with regard to the appearance of Miss Bracely, that made talk rather jerky and unconnective. Then also it had gone about that the mysterious Indian, who had been seen now and then during the last week, was actually staying with Mrs Lucas, and why was he not here? More unconjecturable yet, though not so thrillingly interesting, was the ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... at the same time pale, a thing which always displeases me and which is, in fact, unpleasant; it impresses me as a sort of diseased healthfulness. Moreover, he had the slow yet jerky way of speaking that characterizes the pedant. Even his manner of walking, which was not that of youth and health, repelled me; as for his glance, it might be said that he had none. I do not know what to think of a man whose eyes have nothing to say. These are ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... something about machinery," admitted Russ. "It is something new to go on moving picture machines, to steady the film as it moves behind the lens. You've often noticed how jerky the pictures are at times?" ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... bleeding-point, to keep back his groans, Frobisher contrived to raise himself to a sitting posture, and he then discovered that he was in a closed litter of some sort, or palanquin, which, he could tell by its short, jerky motion, was being borne over ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... man closely without appearing to do so. He saw Barker flush slightly, and did not miss the jerky nervousness of his answer—that or ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... questions which might be asked, but staring at the flimsy bit of paper, with its jerky lettering, would not answer any of them. And the issue called for instant decision. Already, in obedience to a signal from Stump, men were standing by the fixed capstans on the mole ready to cast off the yacht's hawsers. Perhaps Sir ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... damp towels, and attempts to dry his shivering limbs; his clothes have fallen on the wet floor; he cannot force his blue toes into his oozy socks. At the moment he is attempting to wriggle himself into his trousers the horse is hitched-to again, and the jerky and jolty journey back up the beach begins. If the hair of a boy of ten could turn white in a single morning, there would be many a hoary-headed youngster in British watering-places. John Leech, in Punch, used to make pictures of the experiences ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... afterwards. This was followed by a second crashing peal of thunder, as if the very heavens were coming down and were rattling about our ears; while the ground heaved up beneath our feet violently, with its former jerky motion.—"Ze sbirrits of eefel vas valk ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Legation this evening, I saw von Below, the German Minister, driving home from the Foreign Office to his Legation. He passed close to me, and I saw that the perspiration was standing out on his forehead. He held his hat in his hand and puffed at a cigarette like a mechanical toy, blowing out jerky clouds of smoke. He looked neither to left nor right, and failed to give me his usual ceremonious bow. He is evidently not at ease about the situation, although he continues to figure in the newspapers as stating that all is well, that Germany has no intention ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... special muscles do special work, but when a man is moved, an undulating "wave of feeling passes over him and his whole body becomes eloquent." A bow may be so careless and jerky as to be almost an insult, or it may be so gracious as to seem a caress. Again, the real self, gracious and beautiful, may strive to express itself through a set of faculties that are hardened and narrowed by ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... much to say, sir," he recited in a nervous, jerky voice. "I have been sent by the Fraternal Association of Comic Supplement Children. We wish to raise our voice against the almost universal conception that people can be made to laugh only when one of us hides a pin on the seat of grandpa's chair. ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... the reply, in the jerky speech characteristic of the man. "Greatest breeding-place in the world. You'll see. Nothing like it anywhere else. And, what's more, it's almost the last. This is the only fort left to prevent the destruction not of a tribe—but of an entire species ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... buoyantly relieved—she dragged a footstool to his feet and sat looking beseechingly up at him. But as in many men the cringing of a dog, the flinching of a frightened child, rouse not pity but a surprised and jerky cruelty, so her humility only annoyed him. And he saw her now as middle-aged, as beginning to be old. Even while he detested his own thoughts, they rode him. She was old, he winced. Old! He noted how the soft flesh was creasing ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... maze of high-sounding sentiment, was Rationalism pure and simple. Its god was not the creator of the visible universe, of angels and archangels, dominions, principalities, and powers, of incalculable natural and supernatural forces, but a jerky loose-jointed pasteboard divinity, the exclusive possession, since it is the exclusive invention, of the Anglo-Saxon race, through whose gaping mouth any and every self- elected prophet was free to shout, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... great man, a president perhaps of a big industry or of a railroad, or a senator—and shortly afterwards, Strong Man's own son comes into the room. Would he like to see his son abashed, awkward, spasmodically jerky, like the poor bumpkin who came the other day to ask about removing the ashes, or worse yet, bold and boisterous or cheeky; or would he like that boy of his to come forward with an entire lack of self-consciousness, and as his father introduces him as "My Son!" have him put out his hand ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... evening still raged furiously and I was in desperately low spirits. I had been able to eat nothing during the preceding day. I lay there half asleep, half awake, for, I suppose, a long time, hearing the window rattle sometimes when the cannon was noisy and feeling under the jerky reflections on the wall as though I were in an old shambling cab driving along a dark road, I thought a good deal about that talk with Semyonov that I had. What a strange man! But then I do not understand ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... stood upon the hereditary estate of her husband the lady had never visited it, owing to its insulation by this well-nigh impracticable ground. The drive to the base of the hill was tedious and jerky, and on reaching it she alighted, directing that the carriage should be driven back empty over the clods, to wait for her on the nearest edge of the field. She then ascended beneath ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... it likely to succeed. Your confidence oozes away, you fill steadily up with nameless apprehensions, every fiber of you is tense with a watchful strain, you start a cautious and gradual curve, but your squirmy nerves are all full of electric anxieties, so the curve is quickly demoralized into a jerky and perilous zigzag; then suddenly the nickel-clad horse takes the bit in its mouth and goes slanting for the curbstone, defying all prayers and all your powers to change its mind—your heart stands still, your breath hangs fire, your legs forget to work, straight ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... compact file which followed me, and pushed me like a spiral spring. Some barrack sergeants were exerting themselves authoritatively among piles of new-smelling clothes, of caps and glittering equipment. Geared into the jerky hustle from which we detached ourselves one by one, I made the tour of the place, and came out of it wearing red trousers and carrying my civilian clothes, and a blue coat on my arm; and not daring to put on either ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... he heard a rumpus that shot him erect, and sent his extraordinarily conspicuous orange dagger of a beak darting from side to side in that jerky way of listening that many ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, and the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and are therefore familiar with Browning's custom of leaving out words, using odd, informal words which another man might think out of place in poetry, and employing strange, sometimes jerky, meters. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... handclappings. A few persons whispered: "Why is he late?" "Why doesn't he come?" "I wonder where Diotti is," and then came unmistakable signs of impatience. At its height Perkins appeared, hesitatingly. Nervous and jerky he walked to the center of the stage, and raised his hand begging silence. The ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... buttoned. Did you ever see a tourniquet? Well, this is one. All I have to do is to duck my head under his arm and begin to twist. I must twist rapidly—very rapidly. I know how to do it; twisting in a violent, jerky way, ducking my head under his arm with each revolution. Before he knows it, those detaining fingers of his will be detained. He will be unable to withdraw them. It is a powerful leverage. Twenty seconds after I have started revolving, the blood will be bursting out of his ...
— The Road • Jack London
... find his cave. He took my rifle. He can see them coming; he'll have every advantage against attack; and there's another way out of the cave, up on top of the hill. There's just one thing against him. There wasn't even a canteen here. He took some jerky and canned stuff—but only one measly beer bottle of water. When that's used up it's going to be a dull time for him. We can't get water to him very handy without leaving some sign. We mustn't get ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... one tense jerky burst, "Miss Mary it's only working under Miss Jane now would make me leave you so. I know how good you are and I work myself sick for you and for Mr. Edgar and for Miss Jane too, only Miss Jane she will want everything different from like the way we always did, ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... in a servile position. Pottery was manufactured of excellent but simple patterns. Metal work was, of course, thoroughly understood, and the Anglo-Saxon swords and knives discovered in barrows are of good construction. Every chief had also his minstrel, who sang the short and jerky Anglo-Saxon songs to the accompaniment of a harp. The dead were burnt and their ashes placed in tumuli in the north: the southern tribes buried their warriors in full military dress, and from their tombs much of the little knowledge which we possess as to their habits is derived. Thence have ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... universe at large, as was the squire's daily custom. He called out a good morning and waved his stick in greeting toward the squire with a gesture which he endeavored to make natural. His aging muscles, staled by thirty-odd years of lack of practice at such tricks, merely made it jerky and forced. Still, the friendly design was there, plainly to be divined; and the neighborly tone of his voice. But the squire, ordinarily the most courteous of persons, and certainly one of the most talkative, did not return the salutation. Astonishment congealed his faculties, tied his ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... suddenly quivers, oscillates, advances, recoils, first in one direction, then in another, until in the end the little hillock of sand is crossed. Now we are free of the brick and on excellent soil. Little by little the load advances. This is no cartage by a team hauling in the open, but a jerky displacement, the work of invisible levers. The body seems to ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... felt herself a naked soul, alone on a wide sea, with shapes of pain and agony and revolt. She looked at the sleeping wife. "He, too, is probably asleep," she thought, remembering some information which a kindly warder had given her in a few jerky, well-meant sentences, while she was waiting downstairs in the gaol for Minta Hurd. "Incredible! only so many hours, minutes left—so far as any mortal knows—of living, thinking, recollecting, of all that makes us something as against the nothing of death—and ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... tight, she peered at him through the shadows. He did not move. He was sleeping heavily, curiously, irregularly, his breath coming in jerky little snorts. "Oh," she wailed in her guilt heart, "he is, he is! Poor dear old Joey, drunk! And it's all, all my fault!" Swiftly she undressed in the dark. If he were to awaken, to begin saying ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... something abrupt and jerky in his manner—something strained, and with sufficient temper in it to make the child cease from entreaty. The very pain Baltimore, is feeling has made his manner harsher to the child. Yet, as the latter passes him obediently, he seizes the small ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... bare room with the floor covered with straw. Two telegraph operators are making that infernal jerky clicking sound I have begun so to hate. Half a dozen men of the signal staff are lying about the floor looking at week-old papers. In the next room I can hear the general, seated at a table and intent on his map, talking to an officer that has just come from the ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... barely put the query before John Ward stalked through the fort door and stood at Dale's elbow. Speaking slowly and stressing his words in that jerky fashion that marks an Indian's speech in ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... word he was saying, after those first jerky sentences. He stood looking past Bill at a drunken Irishman who was making erratic progress up the street; and he was no more conscious of the Irishman than he was of Bill's scorching condemnation of the town ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... standing in the full moonlight in the courtyard, I perceived Good, adorned with an enormous ostrich feather head-dress and a flowing silken cloak, which it is the right thing to wear upon these occasions, and shouting out the abominable song which he and the old gentleman had evolved, to a jerky, jingling accompaniment. From the direction of the quarters of the maids of honour came a succession of faint sniggerings; but the apartments of Sorais herself — whom I devoutly pitied if she happened to be there — were silent as the grave. There was absolutely no end ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... from a mass of somewhat jerky, contradictory information, had gleaned that the new leading part at the London theatre had been gained through the middle-aged bridegroom's influence, her comment ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... With a short, jerky movement of his head Malcolm Sage motioned his visitors to be seated. In that one movement his steel-coloured eyes had registered a mental photograph of the two men. That glance embraced all the details; the dark hair of the younger, greying at the temples, the dreamy grey eyes, ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... man is absolutely alone in a Station he runs a certain risk of falling into evil ways. The risk is multiplied by every addition to the population up to twelve- -the Jury-number. After that, fear and consequent restraint begin, and human action becomes less grotesquely jerky. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... perhaps five hundred yards from the Fort, a point of light had appeared. At first it was still, and then it took an odd jerky motion, to this side and to that, up and ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... failing in health of late; his old pains were on him again, and, as well as his hind leg, had seized his right shoulder, where were still lodged two rifle-balls. He was feeling very ill, and crippled with pain. He came up the familiar bank at a jerky limp, and there caught the odor of the foe; then he saw the track in the mud—his eyes said the track of a small Bear, but his eyes were dim now, and his nose, his unerring nose, said, "This is the track of the ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... one side of the little bay and looked through the bushes at the shore beyond, he understood. For there was a long stretch of mingled coral and sand exposed by the low tide, and perhaps fifty yards distant were two birds—curlews—running toward the boys with nervous, jerky motions. They were furtively picking up crabs, and Mart quickly set up his camera and focused it. But the instant he began to turn the crank, the two birds ceased their antics. With an inquiring pipe, they looked toward the slight click; then one of them desperately ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... of delivery, it should be remembered that the easiest movement is the best. A long, free sweep of the arm, aided by a swing of the body, will give more speed, be more deceiving to the batter, and allow of more work than any possible snap or jerky motion. Facing the striker before pitching, the arm should be swung well back and the body around so as almost to face second base in the act of delivery; this has an intimidating effect on weak-nerved batters; ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... looking for, close to the 'water circle.' It was big and indistinct, and wavered curiously, as though the shadow of a vast spider hung suspended in the air, just beyond the barrier. It passed swiftly 'round the circle, and seemed to probe ever toward me; but only to draw back with extraordinary jerky movements, as might a living person if they touched the hot bar ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... her coachman drive fast, and while the horses trotted rapidly along the Rue Royale and the boulevards, she told what had happened to Nana in jerky, breathless sentences. ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... got up on the platform and after he had made a funny, jerky, fat, little bow, all of a sudden every word of that poem seemed to slip from his mind! He stood there, looking around the room, now up at the ceiling and now down at the floor. His face grew red, and he began pulling at the ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Keeping Store • Laura Lee Hope
... there is great pain aggravated by movement, and the animal is usually stiff as though foundered, the pulse is quick and hard, the breathing abdominal, the chest being fixed so far as possible, the inspiration short and jerky, the expiration longer. The pain is caused by the friction of the dry, inflamed pleural surfaces of the lung and chest on each other. At this stage the ear detects a dry friction murmur, resembling somewhat the sound made by rubbing two pieces of sole leather ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... enthusiastic devotee,—the second who lifts his crown quite from his head; last the Ethiopian prince, gorgeous in green and gold, who, I am sorry to say, burlesques the whole solemnity. His devotion may be equally heart-felt, but it is more jerky than that of the others. He bows well and adequately, but recovers his balance with a prodigious start, altogether too suggestive of springs and wheels. Perhaps there is a touch of the pathetic in this grotesque fatality of the black king, whose suffering race has always held mankind ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... wonderful young man?" snapped a jerky little voice. "Johnny Gamble? You bet he is! ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... started; sometimes preparatory to and during the utterance there is a tremulous motion about the muscles of the mouth. The hesitation increases, and instead of a steady flow of modulated, articulate sounds, speech is broken up into a succession of irregular, jerky, syllabic fragments, without modulation, and often accompanied by a tremulous vibration of the voice. Syllables are unconsciously dropped out, blurred, or run into one another, or imperfectly uttered; especially is difficulty found with consonants, particularly explosive ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... in the current and led him listlessly, all the jump and fight gone out of him, to the foot of the cliff. There was no apparent way to get down; so, taking my line in hand, I began to lift him bodily up. He came easily enough till his tail cleared the water; then the wiggling, jerky strain was too much. The fly pulled out, and he vanished with a final swirl and slap of his broad tail to tell me ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... the sun. Her little, rosebud mouth pouted and smiled, and altogether she was so sweet and dainty and graceful that the middle-aged, gray-bearded Americano began to beam upon her with admiring eyes and to hover over her with jerky, heavy attempts at gallantry. He asked her name, but she took sudden alarm and answered only with a shrug of her shoulders and a swooning glance of her great black eyes. He put his arm about her waist ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
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