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More "Jerking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... entered the soul of the emancipated bird; he listened, he looked, and at last he spoke, a low, soft, "wee-o." That broke the spell, he drew himself up, hopped about the tree, flew to a shrub, all the time posturing and jerking wings and tail in extreme excitement and no doubt happiness to the tips of his toes. At last he dropped to the ground and fell to digging and reveling in the soft loose earth with enthusiasm. The loving friend looking ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... jerking out the two words in a high staccato. He hated to be questioned, particularly by his wife. His hands reached for the ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... yet," said Ricardo, not even unfolding his arms or shifting his attitude an inch. He lowered his voice to add: "And if I thought you had been to the police, I would tell Pedro to catch you round the waist and break your fat neck by jerking your head backward—snap! I saw him do it to a big buck nigger who was flourishing a razor in front of the governor. It can be done. You hear a low crack, that's all—and the man drops down like ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... slender and straight in a single red thread he thrust the chain into it, holding his hands as far apart as possible in the attitude of a player about to catch a bounced ball. But immediately the pain of that grew unendurable too, and he leaped back, jerking his hands away. He had succeeded only in blackening the steel and putting a big water blister on one of his wrists right where the shackle bolt would ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... description of the ostrich, compiled from ancient authors. It is said, amongst other things, to eat copper, iron, stones, etc., and to have only two claws on its feet. Its legs are so strong that it can dangerously wound a man by jerking. It can run 300 li a day. Its native countries are A-dan (Aden) Dju-bo (on the Eastern African coast). A rude but tolerably exact drawing of the camel-bird in the Pen-ts'ao proves that the ostrich was well known to the Chinese in ancient times, and that they paid great attention ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... grip. The forefinger should be clear of the trigger when cocking the pistol. Some men have difficulty at first in cocking the pistol with the right thumb. This can be overcome by a little practice. Jerking the pistol forward while holding the thumb on the ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... expression of evil satisfaction. A smile flitted across the dreaming boy's features. The hermit muttered, "So—his heart is happy;" and he turned away. He went stealthily about the place, seeking here and there for something; now and then halting to listen, now and then jerking his head around and casting a quick glance toward the bed; and always muttering, always mumbling to himself. At last he found what he seemed to want—a rusty old butcher knife and a whetstone. Then he crept to his place by the fire, sat himself down, and began to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with the cut of his clothes. In fact, there was nothing right about him. He had been so beset that he could not think of anything but himself. One day, while sauntering along a campus path, with his hands in his pockets, he met two students coming toward him. They went to right and left, and, jerking his hands from his pockets, roared in each ear, "How dare you walk with ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... big man in the long coat?" said another, who had not participated in the banter of his companions on the Puritanical devices of Charles and his cronies. He was jerking his head aside to where a man whom we have known in other scenes was pushing ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... the jerking and grinding he felt beneath him that his ill-fated vessel was being slowly forced over the reef towards the shore. His first lieutenant, Venables, crawled up to the bridge, and, bawling into his ear, asked if anything could be done. The lieutenant ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... short-circuit that end, and Prickles didn't wait to meditate prehistorically that time. He came. He came full tilt into the midst of the melee like—well, like a clockwork toy still, that couldn't stop. Only he did stop, against the biggest rat of all, ducking his head, and jerking forward his shoulder-muscles, and spines, with a sort of a thrust over his head, and a noise like a pair of expiring bellows; ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... began to lour again, nevertheless we took the prize in tow, and continued on our voyage for the next three days, without anything particular happening. It was the middle watch, and I was sound asleep, when I was startled by a violent jerking of my hammock, and a cry "that the brig was amongst the breakers." I ran on deck in my shirt, where I found all hands, and a scene of confusion such as I never had witnessed before. The gale had increased, yet the prize had not been cast off, and the consequence was, that by some mismanagement ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... wall of the jungle and hollowly from the hillside, the improvised chantey was raised by Barker, and the chorus line taken up by the other seamen as though they were jerking aloft the ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... vor uppard of vivdeen year, tu my zurtain knowledge," said the old road-mender, jerking his empty pewter upwards in the direction of the terrace, where Sir Timothy's solid dark form could be discerned pacing up and down before ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... changed her shoes for a pair of bedroom slippers and was occupying the arm-chair, immersed in the newspaper. She started at Joan's abrupt question, the movement jerking the glasses from off her nose. She picked them up ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... Sholto," said the little man, still jerking and smiling. "That is my name. You are Miss Morstan, of course. And ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the length to which his projections had reached. What were they all about? The answer was presented by the glittering figure of the Manchu; she had risen and was standing in the entrance of the summerhouse. He thought, with a jerking pulse, of Oriental similes; she was a lotus-woman, a green slip of willow, an ambrosial moon, a mustard flower. Her teeth were white buds, ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... barely turn the wheel. Madden could feel the jerking of the cable even through the great mass of pitching iron. Then the wheel clamped viselike. The dock's headlight and the intermittent glow of the tug teetered, swung out of line, crossed each other, like dancing fires. In a sort of panic, the two ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... be pleased?" persisted her husband, jerking his head explanatorily in the direction in which ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... Ferrara tucked in a leathern belt, and a commodore's cocked hat on one side of his head. He was remarkable for always jerking up his breeches when he gave out his orders, and his voice sounded not unlike the brattling of a tin trumpet, owing to the number of hard north-westers which he had swallowed in the course ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... see the runaway team, a plough jerking at their heels, dashing madly across the furrows, one of the horses apparently much wilder than the other. They saw Jarvis, Ferry, and Max reach the rail fence at nearly the same moment, and go over it at a rate of speed which suggested danger to trousers-legs. Bob could be ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... thorns run deep into her fingers without leaving her hold. Roger grasped the other end: and they pulled, without jerking, and with all their strength, till he reached the bank, and they could help him out with ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... and the whole of the family were congregated in the little back parlour, when young Jerry started up at the well-known sound of a customer at the shop-door, at which he arrived with a hop, step, and jump; and, jerking it open, beheld a little old gentleman ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... men cleaning the foot walks. At that moment an automobile turned into the lake drive, and its blinding lights shone full into Sahwah's eyes. Dazzled, she turned her head away, at the same time jerking the steering wheel to the right. The bob swerved sharply to one side and crashed into a tree. The force of the impact threw Dick clear of the sled and he rolled head over heels down the hill, landing in the snow ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... closed in on him. Kid Wolf hit him full in the face and Floristo went sprawling down. He was still jerking at his gun butt as he ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... so on this occasion, to the immense edification of the little red squirrel, no doubt. At least, if we may judge from the way in which it glared and stared at the trapper—peeped at him round the trunk of the tree, and over the branches and under the twigs and through the leaves, jerking its body and quirking its head and whisking its tail—we have every reason to conclude that it experienced very deep interest and intense excitement. Pleasure and excitement being, with many people, ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... and the neighbours' kindly attempts to bring him round were happily unsuccessful. The worst part of that drive fell to the share of his wife, who sat holding his head on her lap as they jolted along, trying to keep the jars and bumps from jerking his leg, though all the time she firmly believed he was dead, and was already, in her dulled mind, making pitiful little arrangements about mourning and the funeral, and contemplating, with dreary equanimity, a widowed existence with three-and-sixpence ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... man, jerking his head around. He had been scanning the mass of his own craft, packed behind him, fading into the shadows out of the light. There was a peculiar look in his eyes when he faced DesCaut again, a thrust to his square jaw. In ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... fall]. We stuck ten yards from the camp, and nine hours later found us little more than half a mile on. I have never seen a sledge sink so. I have never pulled so hard, or so nearly crushed my inside into my backbone by the everlasting jerking with all my strength on the canvas band round my unfortunate tummy. We were all in ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... of the square a narrow street sets off, jerking this way and that, as if uncertain what point to make for. Here lurks the post-office, which had once the reputation of being as crooked in its ways as the ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... senses streamed into that one sense, and hearing gave the thrill of touch. She had learned to know his mood by his footstep. She knew the swinging, rhythmic tread that beat out the measure of his verse, the slow, lingering tread that marked the procession of his thoughts, and the troubled, jerking tread that shook her nerves, that sent through her, like an agonized pulse, ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... "Here," jerking the laundry bag, "it holds a lot—brushes, soap, nightgown, toothpowder, fountain-pen, note-book, everything. Berta carried your mending basket. You needn't ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... to protest again, but another scream ripped down the corridor, jerking us all around. It was Jenny, running toward us. She was breathing hoarsely as she nearly crashed into ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... who are the most pious; but the lukewarm, lazy professor is subject to it. The wicked fear it and are subject to it; but the persecutors are more subject to it than any, and they have sometimes cursed and sworn and damned it while jerking."[240:1] ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... on that train, bumping, stopping, jerking ahead, and sometimes sliding back. At three stations we stopped long enough to make some tea, but were unable to wash, so when we arrived at B—, where we were to embark for Blighty, we were as black as Turcos and, with our unshaven faces, we looked like ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... declared, as the struggles of the man nearly pitched both of them out of the saddle. "Just give me a hand, Bud; for, I reckon, we'll have to lower him to the ground until he gets his right senses back or quits this twitching and jerking. I am afraid he will start the wound to ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... great excitement and exhilaration— to LILY.] Yes, yes, I won't keep you and— [winking at her and jerking his head in FARNCOMBE'S direction] from your tete-a-tete. [Patting her face gleefully.] Ha, ha, ha, ha! [Taking her hand, his own quivering.] Lil, Uncle Lal you call me, but I've always felt more like a parent towards you— acted as ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... very gruffly asked Jan Cuxson, jerking his head in the direction of the room where the few and favoured awaited the pleasure ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... the prepuce back and forth, or I grasped the organ at its root and violently jerked it back and forth. I soon began to masturbate not only every time that I defecated, but also at night just before I went to sleep, and sometimes early in the morning. On the whole I preferred the jerking just described. I always brought about ejaculation after perhaps five minutes of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... vibrating, traversed by a jerking and a trembling; he got up and approached the window, ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... intense and questioning. But in both it was a large kind of look, that was not all the time being broken up and convulsed by trivial things. They both carried their heads like Indian women, with a kind of noble unconsciousness. He got so tired of women who were always nodding and jerking; apologizing, deprecating, coaxing, insinuating ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... memory—and swaying, jerking, pounding, into ruts and holes, the chariot drew up like a hurricane blast before quite an imposing-looking building at the corner of the Market Square. Having paid off the lunatic of the whip and stood him a drink, Laurence engaged a room, and wondered what the deuce he should ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... Flyer," as this train was derisively called among railroad men, was jerking along through the hot afternoon over the monotonous country between Holdridge and Cheyenne. Besides the blond man and himself the only occupants of the car were two dusty, bedraggled-looking girls who had been to the Exposition at Chicago, and who were earnestly discussing ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... straight out, so Vaughan pulled hard. But the harder the boy pulled the faster the horse moved. And it could move. Vaughan had never had such an uncomfortable few minutes in his life. Every part of the horse seemed to be moving by itself, and jerking him in all directions. He couldn't possibly sit in the saddle. He let the stirrups take all his weight and just hung on. ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... The helpless, jerking limbs, the broad, rolling body, and the mixture of expletives and frantic apologies poured forth by the prostrate knight turned the Queen's first ready alarm to irrepressible laughter, in which the bystanders joined to their great relief. Droop alone was grave, for he could only ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... "He allows," said Triplett, jerking his thumb at the chief, "that we orter git the Tree-with-Wings in out'er the wet. The question is, ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... got into you? What business have you got with me, old fellow? What are you pounding me for? What are you jerking me along for? What do you ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... fishing-rod from its enveloping blanket he presently emerged, recrossed the stream, and soon could be seen pushing out into the midst of it, poling an old punt up stream. Anchoring presently in a small cove where the water was deep and cool, he sat in silent watchfulness, occasionally jerking out a perch bass, sometimes a pickerel, but for the most part so still he might have been the occupant of a "painted boat upon a painted" stream. Yet all the time the soft influences of the hour and ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... and explore the mystery, my eye fell upon a faint streak of light, which glimmered through a crack in the door behind my rocking-chair, near the foot of my bed. From the same direction, also, came the sound of a nervous, unequal, jerking tread, which fully explained a portion of the mystery. It was pretty evident, first, that I had a neighbor; secondly, that he spoke English; and thirdly, that he was either ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... stumbled across the room to the chiffonier. Jerking open the top drawer, she groped within and drew forth a folded paper. Turning, she threw it at Jane with vicious force. It fluttered to the floor a few feet ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... the men observed him curiously as he shouldered his way out of the circle. He went to his gold medal cot, and jerking off one of the fine, heavy army blankets, spread it on the floor. Then he rummaged amongst the clothing in his locker, and taking out a pair of extra shoes, a flannel shirt, and a white stable suit, rolled them into his blanket. Throwing the bundle thus made over his shoulder, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... was lessening the speed of his machine now and jerking dangerously at intervals. But he thought of what one of those soldiers had said banteringly to another—Stick around at the other end of it and listen to what you hear, and he was resolved that if limited horse power and unlimited will power could get this wire to those brave ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... getting across the boundary line the next night. Both men and beasts were wearied with the long journey, but Corporal Black is the sort of man that never wearies in either brain or body. He never hesitated a second. Jerking his rat-skin cap down, covering his face as much as possible, he rode silently around to the south of the encampment, clutched a revolver in each hand, and rode within earshot, then ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... and built a fire a few feet in front of their house and fried some bacon and a steak and made snow water and a pot of tea. The steak and bacon were eaten on slices of bread without knife or fork. Their repast over, Solomon made a rack and began jerking the meat with a slow fire of green hardwood smoldering some three feet below it. The "jerk" under way, they reclined on their blankets in the snow house secure from the touch of a cold wind that swept down the hillside, looking out at the dying firelight ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... as far as I can remember, that really decided the thing. They had been restive, backing and jerking and pawing and nickering for their feed-box. And suddenly they jumped forward. But this time they kept going. Whether Dinky-Dunk tried to hold them back or not I can't say. But I came back to the shack, shivering. Percy, thank ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... hain't squir'ls; hit's that varmint Tusk Potter. I hain't afeerd ter tell. His shack's back thar;" jerking his thumb over his shoulder, "or, I'd ought ter say, what's left of hit's thar. ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... of her chair. Idly she put out her hand, stroking the bright feathers. From somewhere else, startling the man when he saw it gliding by him on its soft pads, a big puma, ran forward, threw up its head, snarling, its tail jerking back and forth restlessly. Zoraida spoke quietly; the monster cat crept close to her chair and lay down before her, stretched out to five feet of graceful length. Zoraida set one foot lightly upon the tawny back. ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... Jerking and jolting, Bursting and bolting, Smelling and steaming, Shrieking and screaming, Snorting and shaking, Quivering, quaking, Skidding and slipping, Twisting and tripping, Bumping and bounding, Puffing and pounding, Rolling and rumbling, Thumping and ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... had only left that shutter alone. He had no restraint, no restraint—just like Kurtz—a tree swayed by the wind. As soon as I had put on a dry pair of slippers, I dragged him out, after first jerking the spear out of his side, which operation I confess I performed with my eyes shut tight. His heels leaped together over the little doorstep; his shoulders were pressed to my breast; I hugged him from behind desperately. Oh! he was heavy, heavy; heavier ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... darted for the door to the hallway. He reached it, and was jerking it open, when the two Japs flung themselves upon him. He lifted one from his feet with a well-placed swing. The other flung his arms about Martin's neck ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... Judicious management; letting the public see your animal just enough, and not too much; holding him up hard when the market is too full of him; letting him out at just the right buying intervals; always gently feeling his mouth; never slacking and never jerking the rein;—this is what ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the child's mind would be a mere tabula rasa. Suppose, on the other hand, we failed to wipe out each other's teaching, the unfortunate youth would be launched upon life with half his guns pointed inboard and his needle jerking from one pole to the other. Consider ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... with Allan, and I do not think I ever missed him so much as I did that day. I am afraid I was rather impatient with Jack that morning; to be sure she was terribly awkward and inattentive; she would put her elbows on the table, and ink her fingers, and then she had a way of jerking her hair out of her eyes, which drove me nearly frantic. I began to think we really must send her to school. We had done away with the folding doors, they always creaked so, and had hung up some curtains in their stead; through the folds I could catch glimpses of dear ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... "Will!" said she (jerking it out in sudden despair of her own powers to lead to what she wanted to say), "I ...
— Lizzie Leigh • Elizabeth Gaskell
... this characteristic call-note, with drooping jerking tail, trembling wings, and uplifted parti-colored bill, he looks unnerved and limp by the effort it has cost him. But in the next instant a gnat flies past. How quickly the bird recovers itself, and charges full-tilt at his passing dinner! The ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... it and snapped at her, Eddie jerking her back just in time to save her from his teeth, while Archie, who was very fond of Vi, struck the dog a blow with a stick, crying furiously, "You just do that again, sir, and ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... hand—Dunlavey's hat. He laughed. "Why, I'm cert'nly impolite!" he said insinuatingly. "Here you've been wantin' to go an' I've been keepin' your hat!" He dumped the ballots upon the table and passed the hat to Dunlavey. Without a word Dunlavey took it, jerking it savagely, placed it on his head, and strode to the door, ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... was at least two hours long, and many a hitch did the Squire give me before it was over; that was the beginning of the little trick, which you see I have now, of jerking up a little on ...
— The Talkative Wig • Eliza Lee Follen
... Apaches were trying to climb up the backs of those who had first leaped to seize the edge of the ceiling hole. Under the strain of their jerking weight one of the ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... Bright moonlight, made coffee and milk. Called men. George very bad. Portaged outfit 200 yards to boat. Found her high. Worked till 4.30 to launch her. Little wind. Made Pompey Island at 11. Saw many whales and seals. Caught caplin on fish-hook tied to stick jerking them. Stopped on Pompey for lunch. Mossy island of Laurentian rock. Saw steamer in distance. Put off—fired three or four shots. Got only a salute. Put off in canoe to head her off. She came about. ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... started on both motors at 10.45, but soon found that we were unable to move the full loads owing to the blue ice surface, so took to relaying. We advanced under three miles after ten hours' distracting work—mostly pulling the sledges ourselves, jerking, heaving, straining, and cursing—it was tug-of-war work and should have broken our hearts, but in spite of our adversity we all ended up smiling and camped close on ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... Drake, who was shaking with the fun, "can't you see old topgallant sail down below springing up in his berth with a lurch and cracking his head against the beams, and our dignified fresh tute jerking those long, thin legs out of bed, and wondering what's about to happen this fine morning, and old Clump and Juno groaning out 'O de Lord!' and knocking their black pates together as they both try to get out of bed at the ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... happy man I know of in New Orleans to-day," said the little rector, jerking his head and drawing ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... of crowns?" The minister's astonishment was so genuine that in jerking back his head his glasses slipped from his nose ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... him," he said, jerking the free thumb at Maitland, "'ll go up and hunt him out. Begin at th' top floor an' work down. That's th' way, huh? 'Nd," to the policeman, "yeh stay here an' hold up anybody 't tries tuh leave th' buildin'. There ain't no other entrance, ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... one foot on the ground, the other on the stool, both hands gripping the high shelf, she felt the reptile whipping, writhing, jerking, lashing, flogging at her ankle and instep, coiling round her leg.... And in the fraction of a second the thought flashed through her mind: "If its head is under my foot, or too close to my foot for its fangs to reach me, I am safe while I remain as I am. If its head is free I am ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... at the top of their voices; and the mules were jerking the wagon along the rough trail at a fearful rate, frightened nearly out of their wits at the sight of the Indians and the terrible shouting and whipping ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... the hearth," he answered, masking his own voice with hoarseness and jerking his thumb towards the settle. The girl's eyes followed the signal and saw for the first time the huddled figure on the bench. "I thank you," she said simply, and moved away into the background, her eyes fixed on ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... wants looking into. For, if Stanton called me that, it must be true!—for he is nearly every time right!" He took his seat, and excused himself, jerking out as he stalked forth, glad to be ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... said the Texan, jerking his hitherto patient pony by the bridle till it performed feats of which an impartial observer could scarcely ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... think she cared a fig for you? She's only waiting till you die. Then she'll go to her lover. He's a man of life and limb. Youpish! a hunchback, that all the world laughs at, a worm—" he turned towards the door laughing hideously, his evil face gloating. "You've not got a stick or stone. She"—jerking a finger towards the house—"she earns ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in the middle of the floor, and when the 'sperichil' is struck up, begin first walking and by-and-by shuffling round, one after the other, in a ring. The foot is hardly taken from the floor, and the progression is mainly due to a jerking, hitching motion, which agitates the entire shouter, and soon brings out streams of perspiration. Sometimes they dance silently, sometimes as they shuffle they sing the chorus of the spiritual, and sometimes the song itself is ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... awake now, and jerking Nugget to an upright position, he turned and ran out of the tent. He gained the ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... matter, and so it would have been to the northern travellers. But Ossaroo was a man of the tropics—in whose country salt was both scarce and dear—and consequently he knew other plans for curing meat besides pickling it. He knew how to cure it by the process called "jerking." This was a simple operation, and consisted in cutting the meat into thin slices, and either hanging it upon the branches of trees, or spreading it out upon the rock—leaving the sun ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... much. I'm living on a ranch out that way," jerking his elbow toward the northwest, "but I ride in often to get the mail. Have you just come? You ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... Medlock, speaking with a Yorkshire accent herself and jerking her head over her shoulder ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... opposite; and next to ours, Lilly and the children were all sleeping soundly. I ran the blockade of the hall in my nightgown, and had a splendid romp with the girls after rolling Sophie out of bed, and jerking Nettie up. Mother and Mrs. Brunot cried, "Order," laughing, but they came in for their share of the sport, until an admiring crowd of females at the door told us by their amused faces they were enjoying it, too; so I ran the gauntlet again, ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... which he, too, had begun to suffer from. Prefects, generals, deputies, people in dress-coats and uniforms, were standing about on the platform in imposing groups, their faces solemn, their mouths pursed, their bodies swaying and jerking in the knowing way of public functionaries who feel people are looking at them. And you can imagine how noses were flattened against the windows to see all this hierarchical swelldom. There was Monpavon, his shirt-front bulging like a whipped egg. Cardailhac breathlessly giving his ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... mean to say, his allowance and all that. The money you're good enough to give him. He was rather hoping that you might see your way to jerking up the ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... you!" roared Warlick, and he struck Wambush on the jaw. Wambush tried to kick him in the stomach, but Bradley prevented it by jerking him backward. It now became a struggle between three men and one, and that one really seemed equal in strength ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... torment!" exclaimed the mother, springing up, and jerking the string and box angrily from Mary's hand. "It is too bad! you know well enough that you had no business to touch this. Just see what a condition the floor is in! Oh dear! Shall I never ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... is placed on the branches of a tuft of thyme. By dint of jerking, shaking and tugging at the body, the Burying-beetles succeed in extricating it from the ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... tied this time," I snarled, and, jerking open the bow knot she had so painfully executed, looked out the window for Johnson—until I recalled that he no longer belonged in my perspective. I ended by driving frantically to the club and getting ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... up in her new rocking-chair, set her mouth in a very prim fashion, leaned her head on one side, and began to rock with all her might, jerking her feet from ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... powers of his father had not descended on him. Jerking out sentences by spasms, at length he said, "I was a beggar—I am ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... in to receive full in the face a long, thick teacher's ruler thrown by Dick. It knocked him flat. Picking it up Pan brandished it and charged his enemy. Dick ran along the blackboard, and jerking up one eraser after another he threw them. His aim was poor. His strength waning. His courage had gone. As for Pan it was as if the long fight had only inspired him to renewed ferocity and might. The truth was that a hot dancing fire in Pan's blood ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... done before—or, at any rate, for a long time. And, if Leonora had been a person to play cards and if she had played her cards well, and if she had had no sense of shame and so on, she might then have shared Edward with Florence until the time came for jerking that poor cuckoo out of the nest. Well, Florence would come to Leonora with some such proposition. I do not mean to say that she put it baldly, like that. She stood out that she was not Edward's mistress until Leonora said that she had seen Edward coming ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... "Say, man," said he, jerking his thumb toward the house, "that new girl is the absolute limit. She dropped in just like we'd been expectin' her. I was some ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... chipmunks of the hills scampered out from a cleft in the rocks and perched on a moss-covered log, chattering eagerly and jerking his tail in ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... pollen in the hole four times, each time giving his call; then Haschebaad plants the tree in the hole and fastens its top to the patient's mask; the mask is then pulled off the patient's head by his jerking quickly away from the tree. This is the first night in which the ceremonies are continued until dawn. After the unmasking, the singers take their place at one side of the back of the hogan and begin ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... steep little rise near by. It was connected with the long rope that had a noose at the end. When anyone pulled the rope, as with a foot caught in the loop, a trigger was set free, and the heavy hogshead started to roll down the little descent, jerking the entangled thief up by one or both ankles, as happened to be ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... rumination and jerking of peanut shells upon the track, the group broke up its session, and adjourned by tacit understanding till the next ...
— Hooking Watermelons - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... there was again the sound of approaching footsteps. These feet, however, did not stumble. They were heavy and certain. Mrs. Brenner snatched at the shoes, gathered them up, and turned to run. But one of the lacings caught on a nail on the shelf. She jerked desperately at the nail, and the jerking loosened her hold of both the shoes. With a clatter they ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... expected of Harry, a violent act or a quick relaxation of his iron mood, she had not time to consider, for the shopkeeper had moved. He was jerking his head, his thumb, and finally his arm in the direction of the long, dim passage—such a pointed direction, such a singular gesture, as to startle her with its incongruity. What had that to do with the price of the ring? And if it had nothing to do with the price of ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... woolly lamb-like dog, who certainly possessed a larger amount of courage than would reasonably have been imagined from his attenuated appearance, at once darted after the rabbits, who, jerking their short tails in the funniest way possible and throwing up their hind-legs as if they were going to turn somersaults and come down on the other side, darted off down the glade, making for the holes of their burrows under ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... to push it on, taking a kind of savage delight in the pain it caused her, and feeling that she was thus revenging herself on someone, she hardly knew or cared whom. At last, however, with a quick, jerking motion she drew it off, and covering her face with ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... came out of the window of the shed and clamped a fierce grip around his throat, jerking him backward against the wall. He grabbed ...
— Be It Ever Thus • Robert Moore Williams
... scolding, commanding him to be quiet; and 'Dolph subsided on his haunches and watched her, his stump tail jerking to and fro beneath him like an unweighted pendulum. There was a label attached to the straw bands. She turned it over and read: James Gavel, Proprietor, Imperial Steam Roundabouts, Henley-in-Arden. Deliver Immediately . . . "An' me thinkin' Bill 'ad gone north to Wolver'ampton!" ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and filled with ice, Roaring and crashing on the jerking stage, An utter bridle given to utter vice, Limitless power mad with endless rage Withering the soul; a minute seemed an age. He clutched and hacked at ropes, at rags of sail, Thinking that ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... covey of swift birds, but it is still a fine sight. I became very fastidious as to which moment of it was the finest, whether when the horse rose in profile, or when his aerial hoof touched the ground (with the effect of half jerking his rider's head half off), or when he showed a flying heel in perspective; and I do not know to this hour which I prefer. But I suppose I was becoming gradually spoiled by my pleasure, for as time went on I noticed that I was not ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... gas-pipe bomb; the iron tail was a smaller pipe containing and armoring the fuse, and serving also as the means of propulsion. They were coupling on additional lengths of the fuse-carrying pipe as they were needed; hence the jerking advances ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... little to one side, and, working up toward him, made a sudden lunge, and had him by the hair in a twinkling. Such a shaking as the poor wretch got! Then, with a quick trip, Donovan laid him flat on his back, and, jerking out his big knife, began strapping it ominously on his boot-leg. Oh, how the terrified savage howled! Raed turned away in disgust. After frightening him nearly into fits with the knife, the stalwart sailor with a twitch threw him across his knee, and applied the flat of the ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... two troop trains rattled along the Russki railway or stood interminably at strange-looking stations. The bare box cars were corded deep with sitting and curled up soldiers fitfully sleeping and starting to consciousness at the jerking and swaying of the train. Once at a weird log station by the flaring torchlights they had stood for a few minutes beside a northbound train loaded with Bolshevik prisoners and deserters gathered in ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... been hurt. We'll just have to see what ails the sonsie doggie." He ran his hand down the parting in the thatch to discover if the spine had been injured. When he suddenly pinched the ball of a hind toe Bobby promptly resented it by jerking his head around and looking at him reproachfully. The bairns were indignant, too, but Geordie grinned cheerfully and said: "He's no' paralyzed, at ony rate." He turned as footsteps were heard coming ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... leather gaiters reaching halfway up the thigh—charmed Richard, when his first shyness was passed. They were eager to please him. Their talk was racy. Their laughter ready and sincere. Did not Stamp point out to him a water-ouzel, with impudently jerking tail, dipping and wading in the shallows of the stream? Did not Moorcock find him a water-rail's nest, hidden in a tuft of reeds and grass, with ten, yellowish, speckled eggs in it? And did not both men pluck him handfuls of cowslips, of tawny-pink avens, and ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... utmost at one side. Indeed, by an awkward tilt at one moment some hundred or two of the mackerel were seen to glide away; but perhaps that rendered it all the more practicable to get into the boat what remained. When that heaving, sparkling, jerking mass of quicksilver at last was captured—shining all through the brown meshes of the net—the younger lads sat down quite exhausted, wet ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... you thinking about, child?" she asked, jerking my hand sharply. "Who is it that you call such hard names—'wicked and old' forsooth? ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... His head jerking as he received John's punch, the thug reeled back, throwing up his hand to cover his face. John rushed at him and sank his bruised right fist into his middle. As the fist clouted against his abdomen the bruiser grunted and, doubling ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... "Of course" he seemed now to hold on the wall with his fixed stare the vision of that city office, "at the back of Cannon Street Station," while he growled and mouthed a fragmentary description, jerking his chin up now and then, ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... forget, young Wright," he said, jerking his chin towards the youngster in a confidential sort of way, "don't you forget that Mr. Greve is anxious to find a plausible motive for Mr. Parrish's suicide. People are talking, you understand! That's all I've got to say! Just you think it ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... "Trouble coming," just before the mob spilled out into the square. The fleeing dwarf stared about wildly for an instant, his head jerking from side to side so rapidly that it was impossible to get even a fleeting impression of his face—human or nonhuman, familiar or bizarre. Then, like a pellet loosed from its sling, he made straight for the ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... indications contained in the "American Provings," have been confirmed by my own experience. We read in Nos. 903-911, "the phalangeal bones are painful; burning jerking, like a stitching, contracting sensation, in the right numb, from without inwards; drawing pains reaching the extremities of the fingers; distinct feeling of numbness in the fingers, especially in the tips, around the roots ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... But Skelton, inarticulate with rage, began striking her and jerking her about as though he were trying to tear her to pieces. Only when the girl reeled sideways, limp and deathly white under his fury, did he find his voice, or the hoarse ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... how little musical talent is exhibited by these little ones, whose natures are drawn from the land of music. We have repeatedly seen them sawing away patiently at a violin, or jerking the strings of a harp, but could detect no semblance of melody in the noise they made. Not a few of the little ones endeavor to make up in dancing what they lack in musical skill. Their parents or ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... matter with you? Not feeling spry this morning, or is it hot water you're waiting for?" the mate said, jerking Black out of his bunk as he spoke. "Great Columbus! What kind of a stiff do you call ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... luck," grumbled the inquirer, jerking his flies off the water, and throwing again with a heavy, sullen splash, and frightening ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... the faint distant pattering, which grew into a rapid and insistent rumble. "Cavalry, b'gad!" cried Battersleigh. Franklin's eyes shone. He spurred forward fast as he could go, jerking loose the thong which held his rifle fast in the scabbard ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... Bishopsthorpe, my boy," as if his wife had pulled a string, sand he responded mechanically, without quite knowing what he said. Then, as his eyes rested a moment on his guest, he looked as if he would like to bolt out of the room. He controlled himself, however, and, jerking round again to the fireplace, went on murmuring, "Yes, yes, yes," vaguely—just like the dormouse at the Mad Tea-Party, who went to sleep, saying, "Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle," Cary could not help thinking ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... with a perfectly murderous hatred if you were always on the watch, always suspecting me, if you taunted me as you did a while ago. I'm just as much a savage at heart as you are, Jack Fyfe. I could gladly have killed you when you were jerking ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... it was all the same, fiercely stabbing, jerking, as if some virulent little demon were holding ends of the facial nerves in a pair of pincers, and waiting till the sufferer was a little calm for a few moments before giving the nerve ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... salt water soused down over the gunner and his gun, putting out his linstock and wetting his priming. A shower of balls from the marines piped through the air or rapped up against the planks, but the boat was tossing and jerking in the short choppy waves and to aim was impossible. In vain the men tugged and strained at their oars while the gunner worked like a maniac to relight his linstock and to replace his priming. The boat had lost its weigh, while the brigantine was flying ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... upon it unwinkingly. He saw where the next leap would bring him within its terrible grip, and he made that leap to one side instead, so that the rawhide thudded into the dust alongside his nose. He swerved again lest Jose in jerking it up should catch his feet, and went on with an exultant toss of his white head. It was the game he knew—the game Diego had played with him many times, to the discomfiture of ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... with the whip is given to remind a horse that he has to clear a big ditch on the landing side, or when riding at timber, it should be used on the off flank by a turn of the wrist, but without jerking the reins. The whip, as I have before remarked, should be employed as an aid and not as a means of inflicting pain. A lady should not bustle her horse at his fences, except perhaps at water, for every horse has his own pace at which ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... vine-stumps, and the mule-gins above the wells, and the many ducts and gutters which drain the marshes, our animals steaming as they strained at the traces, and the driver jerking about like some frenzied jumping-jack as he forced them on. The pace was almost racing pace, and to be in a race always warms one's blood. I began to share Taltavull's excitement. He was looking at his watch ever and anon, at each time crying that ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... There was nothing for it but to pull up, and for Aveline to climb laboriously from the trap, and release the much-knotted piece of string. Rendered more careful by this catastrophe, Raymonde wielded her whip with caution, and gave what encouragement she could by jerking the reins vigorously, and occasionally ejaculating an energetic "Go on, Dandy!" The pony, however, was a cunning little creature, and, knowing perfectly well that he was in amateur hands, took full advantage of the situation. Under ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... Jurgen's ill-advised attempt to tear the parchments impaired the dignity of his magnanimous self-sacrifice: he even suspected one of the guards of smiling. So there was nothing for it but presently to give up that futile tugging and jerking, and to compromise by ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... plunge forward almost spasmodically, throwing one foot back in a way leading you to expect that he would the next moment precipitate himself headlong down upon the desks of the students. Twirling his pen, occasional spitting, jerking his foot backward, taken with his dress, gave him a most eccentric appearance in the lecture room. Meeting him upon the street, with his sister, you never would have suspected that such a strange looking being could be Neander. He formerly had two sisters, but a few years ago the favorite ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... that's Madame Hutin, a poor little woman who's dreadfully neglected by her husband; that's Mademoiselle Cecile, the butcher's daughter, a girl that no one will marry because she's scrofulous." In this way she could have continued jerking out biographical scraps for days together, deriving extraordinary amusement from the most trivial, uninteresting incidents. However, as soon as eight o'clock struck, she only had eyes for the frosted "cabinet" window on which appeared the black shadows of the coterie of ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... is a small bird about the size of a sparrow, found near rivers. It derives its name from its note, a slow, clear whistle, concluded by a sharp jerking noise like ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... knowing that she would be the tenderer. Only a single shot was needed, and then he had a great task to carry the hide and the body in sections to the cabin. They ate elk steaks and then hung the rest in the trees for drying and jerking. Dick, according to his previous plan, used the skin to cover the newly mended places in the roof, fastening it down tightly with small wooden pegs. His forethought was vindicated two days later when a great storm came. Both ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... look in a nice straw hat?" he asked, jerking his head toward Winter. The girl smiled. The little man's reputation had reached the kitchen. She glanced demurely at ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... So jerking, he missed his footing as his mistress had before him, lost his balance, and rolled, cursing, clinging, and clambering, over the edge of ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... the old man, inserting the lever into the secret groove in the Atom Smasher and jerking it in the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... Jerking the flaps apart Bryant entered, followed by the contractor. He forced an opening through the group of workmen by a savage sweep of his arms and came to the keg, where the Mexican at the moment was bending down and holding a cup under the spigot. When the man perceived ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... wonderfully on a stage before as the little cow-herd. All the court started to their feet, shouting; and still, while they shouted, they laughed to see the impossible odd man scooping about with his sword, and jerking head over heels, and high up into the air, to get away from the little king's sword-play. The partner had to keep snatching him up out of harm's way, for fear of a wrong ending. Then, suddenly he let him come ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... Lord Saint Sinnes, rising and jerking his knees back after the manner of horsey persons, "you can go back into that room and take your Bible oath that I never asked you to ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... were the poor Indian women, trotting across the square, their black hair plaited with dirty red ribbon, a piece of woollen cloth wrapped about them, and a little mahogany baby hanging behind, its face upturned to the sky, and its head going jerking along, somehow without its neck being dislocated. The most resigned expression on earth is that of an Indian baby. All the groups we had seen promenading the streets the day before were here collected by hundreds; the women of the shopkeeper class, or it ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... late," the man spluttered, jerking his checked cap from side to side. "Since this morning nothing to eat but two boiled eggs.... Think of that. !Que incultura! !Que pueblo indecente! All day only two ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... and legs out just as far as he could, and that kept him from falling as fast and as hard as he otherwise would have done, because being spread out so flat that way, the air held him up a little. And then there was his tail, that funny little tail he is so fond of jerking when he scolds. This helped him too. It helped him keep his balance and keep ...
— The Adventures of Buster Bear • Thornton W. Burgess
... "Oh," he answered, jerking and twisting with fearful delight, "there was such a nice hole in the floor! I covered it all over with straw, but I had to wait ever so long before Jake stepped onto it, and then he ketched hold goin' down, and ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... Miss Ercildoune!" half sobbed, half scolded Sallie, as she sat at her work, blooming and, fresh, the day after her return. "What a tangled thread it is, to be sure," jerking at her knotty needleful. "Well, I know what I'll do,—I'll treat her as if she was a queen born and crowned, just so long as I have anything to do with her,—so I will." And ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... that," muttered Phillis, jerking herself from the room, "but how's the disgrace to be kep' ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... quaking, And pouring and roaring, And waving and raving, And tossing and crossing, And flowing and going, And running and stunning, And foaming and roaming, And dinning and spinning, And dropping and hopping, And working and jerking, And guggling and struggling, And heaving and cleaving, And moaning and groaning, And glittering and frittering, And gathering and feathering, And whitening and brightening, And quivering and shivering, And hurrying and skurrying, And ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... readily to arguments. Therefore she invariably rode Lady Belle, a light-footed little filly, with a tender mouth and nervous as a witch. Her big gentle eyes held a constant look of appeal, she was chafed incessantly by the heavy chain curb, and if anyone approached her suddenly she started back, jerking up her head as though in terror of a blow. But with Juno she was tractable as a lamb, and the pretty creature's whole expression changed when the girl was riding her. Juno had a light, firm hand upon the bit and in spite of Dawson's emphatic orders to "'old 'er curb well in 'and perpetual," ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... is gained by testing the functions of the joint, and if this is done gently and without jerking, it does not cause pain. The child should lie on his back, either on his nurse's knee or on a table; and to reassure him the movements should be first practised on the sound limb. On slowly flexing the thigh of the ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... attended to the animals—one of us generally saw them properly fed—while I gave instructions to the landlord concerning our supper. He was an old man, almost as old as Pierre, and he had such a peculiar trick of jerking his head in answer to my remarks that I almost feared it would come ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... face to the sun's bright decline. Thrusting his head in the noose ... he has hanged himself! 210 Horrible! Horrible! See, how he sways Backwards and forwards.... The Barin, unfortunate, Shouts for assistance, and struggles and prays. Twisting his head he is jerking convulsively, Straining his voice to the utmost he cries, All is in vain, there is no one to rescue him, ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... Johnson rolled swiftly to one side, aiming with his deadly revolver. Up popped the Indian's head, crack went the six-shooter; the head turned slowly, leaving the top exposed. Crack again went the alert gun of the soldier, the ball striking the head just below the scalp-lock and instantly jerking the body ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... was accosted by a tall, nervous man with shifting eyes and twitching lips. It was hard to recognize in this pitiable shaken creature the once resplendent Gordon, who had bent the whole northland to his ends. Some tantalizing demons inside the man's frame were jerking at his sinews. Fear was in his roving glance; he stammered; he plucked at the little captain's sleeve like a frightened woman. The open-hearted ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... Thus exhorted, Haxall jerking his cap jauntily on one side of his head, throwing an additional quantity of impudence into his face, and placing his hands on the hips, so that the elbows stuck out on ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... came the jar of sheet-blocks and the rat-tat-tat of the reef-points against the canvas. In the cabin they could feel the Willi-Waw heel, swing into the wind, and right. David Grief still hesitated. From for'ard came the jerking rattle of headsail halyards through the sheaves. The little vessel heeled, and through the cabin walls came the ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... "He is dying now, at any rate," was my rejoinder. On going to the bedside the patient was found perfectly unconscious, the skin dry and intensely hot, the affected joints pale and devoid of sensibility, the breathing irregular and jerking, the pulse 170 and scarcely perceptible, every muscle relaxed as in death, every power of perception abolished. A thermometer placed in the armpit ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... "Who comes here?" [The room is dark, or the candidate hoodwinked.] The conductor answers, "Our Grand Master, Hiram Abiff." "Our Grand Master, Hiram Abiff!" exclaims the ruffian, "he is the very man I wanted to see (seizing the candidate by the throat at the same time, and jerking him about with violence); give me the Master Mason's word, or I'll take your life." The conductor replies, "I cannot give it now, but if you will wait till the Grand Lodge assembles at Jerusalem, if you are ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... would, either, and for a very good reason, too," returned Ella, pettishly jerking her long curls. "But I can't see why you should bring her up, for he has never been more than polite to her, and that he assured me was wholly on ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... asked, dryly, jerking her head toward the two birds, which she had seen drop from her Eden skies a short ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... is Quinny!" Ninian said, jerking his thumb in Henry's direction. "His real name is Quinn, Henry Quinn, but we call him 'Quinny.' At least, Gilbert does, so, of course we do too. And he's Irish, but he isn't a Catholic, and he says Irish people don't keep pigs in their houses, and they eat other things besides potatoes and ... come ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... enough," said the man. Then, suspiciously, jerking his thumb over his shoulder towards Spotts, he asked: "Who's ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... when the shadows of the mules' ears and heads came jerking into view beside him, and, guiding his horse to the right, Dean loosed rein and prepared to trot by the open doorway of the stout, black-covered wagon. The young engineer officer, sitting on the front seat, nodded cordially to the cavalryman. He had known and liked him at the Point. ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... sticky hand tight, and at that loyal understanding pressure Cosgrave began to cry, shaking from head to foot, jerking out his words between ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... precipice, or up a rocky stairway. In vain did the foremost driver admonish him by thumping his nose with a sharp stick, and tugging and pulling upon the bridle. Rousse was gifted with one of those long, India rubber necks that can stretch out indefinitely, so that the utmost pulling and jerking only took his head along a little farther, but left his heels planted exactly here they were before, somewhat after this fashion. His eyes, meanwhile, devoutly closed, with an air of meekness overspreading his visage, he might have stood as an ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... reached the door, when the stranger drew out a well-lined purse, and, after jerking it in his hand, he again replaced it in his pocket, and more boldly than before renewed his gallantries to fair Janet. Emboldened, however, by what he conceived to have been his recent success, he now overshot the mark; and, as Andrew ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... the Celestyals!" he ejaculated, jerking forth a six-shooter—"by all the roarin', screechin, shriekin', yowlin', squawkin,' ring-tailed, flat-futted cattymounts thet ever did ther forest aisles o' old Alaska traverse! you here, ye infernal smooth-faced varmint? You heer, arter all ye've did to ride ther cittyzens o' Deadwood inter ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... it all right," he said jerking a wan smile, but he looked as though the last of his own nerve had gone into the telephone receiver. "She wanted to put in an extra check, but I told her we'd be generous and let it go at what she could find without ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... the car having reached the foot of the hill that led out of the valley stopped, too, as if paralysed by its owner's efforts at parody. It had been jerking and bucking like a playful mustang for some time past, and behaving in an altogether curious manner, but now it was stiller than the dead. Tryon waggled the levers to no avail, then flung himself out of the car and got busy with the crank. Not a move. Druro ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... breast the last flickering ray of Hope's dim taper—"Sair, I vosh go to Nashveele." Only conceive the horror of being squashed into such a neighbour for twenty-one long hours, and over a road that necessarily kept jerking the unwashed and polecatty head into your face ten times in a minute! Who that has bowels of compassion but must commiserate me in such ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Bearwarden, passing a decanter of claret to Stillman, "may remind us that it is time to splice the 'main brace.' There's a bottle of whisky and some water just behind you," he added to Deepwaters, "while three minutes after I ring this bell," he said, pressing a button and jerking a handle marked '8,' "the champagne cocktails will be on ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... extenso, and yet in its day this diary was cried over—before it was put away in the jewel drawer. Truly women are strange—one can never tell how a thing will present itself to them. Honest Jem Agar, nibbling his penholder and jerking these lucid observations out of his military brain by mere force of discipline, never suspected the heart that was in it all—that minute particle of himself that lay in the blot in the corner carefully absorbed ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... from his mouth and spat once at the woodpile. Then, jerking his thumb toward the little window, he ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... that train, bumping, stopping, jerking ahead, and sometimes sliding back. At three stations we stopped long enough to make some tea, but were unable to wash, so when we arrived at B—, where we were to embark for Blighty, we were as black as Turcos and, with ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... speak a word, because I shouldn't swear to his voice; however, that sha'n't save him, for I'll swear to him any day in the year, if I can but catch him. So, when I told him I had no money, he fell to jerking me again, just as if he had but that moment begun! And, after that, he got me close by a tree, and out of his pocket he pulls a great cord!-It's a wonder I did not swoon away: for as sure as you're alive, he was going to hang to me that ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... chaffing now passed between Couttet and the rival guides. I had had no thought of a race; but I defy anybody, under the circumstances in which we were placed, not to experience a little spurring from the spirit of emulation. Jerking the rope to attract Couttet's attention, I told him in a low voice to pass the others ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... of those careful turns to keep his unsteadiness under control. If Boyd was out there, he must be brought back—now! Hands closed on Drew's shoulders, jerking him back so that he collided with another body, and was held ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... ill-advised attempt to tear the parchments impaired the dignity of his magnanimous self-sacrifice: he even suspected one of the guards of smiling. So there was nothing for it but presently to give up that futile tugging and jerking, and to compromise ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... Shelby had assented to this plan, and directly set about escorting her to her destination. No dread of Ludlow prompted this vigilance. He discerned that that glamour had forever waned. The woman's jerking nerves made him fear a collapse. Stripped of shams for ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... was brown and barren and parched. The earth seemed to lie fainting and awaiting the rain. The horses trotted with extended necks and open mouths, their coats wet with sweat. The driver—an Andalusian, with a face like a Moorish pirate—kept encouraging them with word and rein, jerking and whipping only when they seemed likely to fall from sheer fatigue and sun-weariness. At last the sun began to set in a glow like that of a great furnace, and the reflection lay over ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... beach is another industrious winged miner which has not learned the art of the rapid evacuation of the spoil, but follows the slower ways of the crab, carrying the sand in a pellet between the forelegs, and as it backs out jerking it rearward until a tidy heap is made. But it is a fussy worker, so charged with nervous energy that its glittering wings quiver even while down in the depths of its shaft, as you may assure yourself if you hearken attentively when neither the sea ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... one. Drums, tom-toms, and cymbals were beaten; kotos and samisens screeched and twanged; geishas (professional women with the accomplishments of dancing, singing, and playing) danced,— accompanied by songs whose jerking discords were most laughable; story-tellers recited tales in a high key, and the running about and splashing close to my room never ceased. Late at night my precarious shoji were accidentally thrown down, revealing a scene of great hilarity, in which a number of people were bathing ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... every little ascent, and on every dwarf wall, and on every flight of steps, they cluster like bees. Meanwhile (and especially on festa-days) the bells of the churches ring incessantly; not in peals, or any known form of sound, but in a horrible, irregular, jerking, dingle, dingle, dingle: with a sudden stop at every fifteenth dingle or so, which is maddening. This performance is usually achieved by a boy up in the steeple, who takes hold of the clapper, or a little ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... orders to the division commanders"; how "General Wood left Camp Funston in advance of his division and without waiting to receive his orders"; how General March sent these orders to New York; how "in consequence there was an appearance of eleventh-hour action, an effect of jerking General Wood from the very deck of the transport"; how "General Wood carried his complaint to the President and was told plainly that the list would not be revised in the personal interest ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... a little close together, thin nose, a prominent dimple on left cheek—may wear whiskers. Laughs in low key. Left ear lobe broken. Slightly bowlegged. While in conversation strokes chin. When standing at a counter or bar goes through motions, as if jerking himself together, crowding his elbows slowly to his side for a moment, then, throwing back his head, jumps up from his heels. When dreaming, attempts to bite mustache with lower lip. When he sits in a chair places himself sidewise ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... strange new year," she said aloud, to herself. She moved nearer to the clock, watching the stiff, jerking revolution of the second hand around ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... feet tall, had been erected over the hole in the floor, and several steel cables, connected to a motor-driven steel drum, were looped over the apex of the tripod, one hanging straight down into the shaft. A thick plastic hose hung over the edge of the shaft, jerking spasmodically as air was pumped into ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... his clothing again with a speed that seemed to partake of magic. Then, with Harry close upon his heels, he rushed to the door, jerking it open. ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... of reach of the tyrannosaurus, and wait for the wound to heal or for death to come. It unwound in a maddened convulsive movement and slithered toward the tree where Astro lay. But the monster was after it, immediately grabbing it by the tail and jerking it back. The snake was forced to ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... is securely bolted on to the seat, and consists of two pieces of hard wood, suitably worked, and forming an angle frame. On the bottom side the stretcher poles rest, and the sides of the L formed by the carrier proper prevent most effectually any jerking or turning of the stretcher when once it has been laid in the carrier. The carrier is about thirty inches long, but can be increased to any length desired. It has been found that this length is admirably suited for all purposes. To prevent the stretcher from any lateral or upward ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... it is necessary, as well to ease her working as not to strain her machinery. He is supposed the better judge, and to his counsel all give ear. Now and then a more resolute passenger shoots from no one knows where, holds struggling by the jerking shroud, and, wrapt in his storm cloak, his amazed eyes, watching the scudding elements overhead, peer out upon the raging sea: then he mutters, "What an awful sight! how madly grand with briny light!" How sublimely terrific are the elements here combined to wage ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... was in a foreign land. The fact was recalled by the passing of the train-guard,—an erect and self-possessed young American in "Texas" hat, khaki uniform, and leather leggings, striding along the aisle with a jerking, half-arrogant swing of the shoulders. So, perhaps, might I too soon be parading across the Isthmus! It was not, to be sure, exactly the role I had planned to play on the Zone. I had come rather with the hope of shouldering a shovel and descending into ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... this Rochester depot aforesaid after dark, and the steamboat, the canal- boat, and the Western train of cars had all been kept waiting three hours beyond their usual time, and they all broke loose upon us the moment we put our heads out of the cars, and such a jerking, and elbowing, and scuffling, and swearing, and protesting, and scolding you never heard, while the great locomotive sailed up and down in the midst thereof, spitting fire and smoke like some great fiend monster diverting himself with our commotions. I do think these ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... haunches with their knees doubled up to their very chins, supported in that position the aching head that rested between their rough and horny palms. A first glance might have induced the belief that all were buried in the most profound slumber; but the quick jerking of a limb,—the fitful, sudden shifting of a position,—the utter absence of that deep breathing which indicates the unconsciousness of repose, and the occasional spirting of tobacco juice upon the deck,—all these symptoms only required to be noticed, to prove the living silence ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... is the eastern twilight, it has its own peculiar forms, and the naturalist marks with interest the small, but strong, Hesperiidoe,[1] hurrying, by abrupt and jerking flights, to the scented blossoms of the champac or the sweet night-blowing moon-flower; and, when darkness gathers around, we can hear, though hardly distinguish amid the gloom, the humming of the powerful wings of innumerable ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... paddle steamer which had been fitted for the work. During the night she met with such heavy weather that the engineer was lashed near the brakes; and the electrician, Mr. Latimer Clark, sent the continuity signals by jerking a needle instrument with a string. These and other efforts in the Mediterranean and elsewhere were the harbingers of the memorable enterprise which bound the Old ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... fought so wonderfully on a stage before as the little cow-herd. All the court started to their feet, shouting; and still, while they shouted, they laughed to see the impossible odd man scooping about with his sword, and jerking head over heels, and high up into the air, to get away from the little king's sword-play. The partner had to keep snatching him up out of harm's way, for fear of a wrong ending. Then, suddenly he let him come down with a jump on the little king's head. And at that the king fell back ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... organ by slipping the prepuce back and forth, or I grasped the organ at its root and violently jerked it back and forth. I soon began to masturbate not only every time that I defecated, but also at night just before I went to sleep, and sometimes early in the morning. On the whole I preferred the jerking just described. I always brought about ejaculation after perhaps five ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... quoth he, jerking grimy thumb at his companion, "will ye 'ark to this brimstone witch—been clackin' away all along from Sevenoaks, she 'ave! Gimme a tanner an' she's yourn—say thrippence—say a penny!" At this the woman started to berate him ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... thought of asking the bailiff to allow him to proceed to her lodgings at once, there boldly to avow what had taken place and ask her to discharge the debt; but this his pride would not allow him to do. As he came to the corner of a street, he got a tap on the elbow from the bailiff, who, with a jerking motion of his thumb and a wink, said in a confidential tone to Tom, "Down this street, sir— that's the way ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... they could have quiet, and went tramping away. Then Elsie tried to tell Jacob Isaac how to swim, while Puss Leek darted off to where the horses were tethered. She mounted the one she had ridden—a gentle thing, aged eighteen. Then she came crashing through the bushes and brush, clucking and jerking the bridle, dashed down the bank, and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... murmured, jerking her chin in the direction of the retreating figures, "I'd no idea your sister was ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... a difficult matter, and so it would have been to the northern travellers. But Ossaroo was a man of the tropics—in whose country salt was both scarce and dear—and consequently he knew other plans for curing meat besides pickling it. He knew how to cure it by the process called "jerking." This was a simple operation, and consisted in cutting the meat into thin slices, and either hanging it upon the branches of trees, or spreading it out upon the rock—leaving the ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... in, with horrid, crimson hue upon the pictured walls, gave the place the strange, lurid aspect of Pandemonium. The effect was heightened by the appearance of thousands of small, grotesque beings, all bearing more or less resemblance to the little man of the clock, who were flying and bobbing, jerking and grinning through the air, beneath the great vault, as if madly revelling in the scene. Yet the good man all the while had a vague sense of some awful, impending calamity, which increased as he wandered around in great perplexity, exploring ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... a little jerking kind of a nod, in token of his assent, and then with that perversity which prompts women particularly to press a subject after enough has been said upon it, Mrs. Noah, as she turned to leave the room, gave ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... Bruce Burt!" Uncle Bill was on his knees outside in an instant, jerking and tugging at ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... where the waves assume a jerking rippling action, and set home to the bows or sides; especially tiresome to boats, hampering the oars, and ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... little pointlessly. "Now tell me, Norgate, you showed this list down there?"—jerking his head towards ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and then hesitated and trembled. A wave hit her, and she rocked like a cork. The jump had all gone out of her. Another wave struck her and almost hove her down, and then another wave snapped her back again, jerking out the funnel, which hissed overside into the sea. Half on her side, she clanked into the trough. She struggled to right herself and had partly succeeded, when a mighty wave smote her viciously on her listed side. She went over to her beam ends and lay there a second, while Dan and his men shot ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... saw that he was young, thick-set and restless. She noticed even then his eyes, bright and laughing as though he were immensely amused. His mouth opened and closed again, his eyes were never still, and he made fierce dumb protests with his body, jerking it forward pulling it back, as a rider strives to restrain an unruly horse. Maggie was able to notice these things, because during the first moments her Aunt Anne entirely held the stage. She advanced to the fireplace with her halting movement, embraced the little lady by the fire with ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... his doleful hubbub; but succeeded in jerking out between his big sobs, "I have n't got any father nor mother; I have n't;" and he set out again lamenting more boisterously ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... with a start, rubbed his eyes and looked at the sun, then at the pile of fish beside him. The continued jerking of the line at his leg seemed to bring him out of his drowsiness. With a broad grin he began pulling in the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... a chorus of happy screams. The grubby boy was just too astonished to cry, just too proud of travelling in a carriage. He screwed up his face—and unscrewed it again. Every now and then Tommy sat back as far as he could from the disorder, the collection of jerking arms and legs, in order to adjust the Plymouth spectacles, of which he is so proud, on his small pug nose. As we passed the cross-roads, Straighty was trying to snatch a kiss. While we drove along the Front, the children ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... two of the thoughts that ran through Arthur Temple's brains as he clung desperately to the line with the conger or whatever it was at the end tugging and jerking at it hard enough to make the boy's ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... horse and expended his wrath by viciously jerking at the cinches, until the mustang groaned. Sheriff Kern came suddenly into clear view around the last turn and rode quickly up to them, a very short man, muscular, sweaty. He always gave the impression that he had been working ceaselessly ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... had done speaking he looked on the ground again and sometimes opened his lips only after a long pause and sometimes did not open them at all. The elder man had a curiously uneven and shaky method of walking, jerking his hand forward and throwing up his head abruptly, rather in the manner of an impatient carriage horse tired of waiting outside a house; but in the man these gestures were irresolute and pointless. He talked almost incessantly; he smiled to himself and again began to talk, as if the smile ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... ask if you found anything up there," said Bill, jerking his thumb toward the road over which he had just ridden. It was quite plain that Talpers ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... the impetuosity of the gale, which hurled it with violence against the door and front windows of his cottage, for some moments causing them to vibrate with the concussion. Forster started up, dropping his book upon the hearth, and jerking the table with his elbow, so as to dash out the larger proportion of the contents of his tumbler. The sooty coronal of the wick also fell with the shock, and the candle, relieved from its burden, poured ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... nearly continuous; scarcely an appreciable interval occurred between them; "the throbbing, jerking, and quivering motions grew more positive, intense, and sharp; they were vertical, rotary, lateral, and undulating," producing nausea, vertigo, and vomiting. Late in the afternoon of a lovely day, April 2, the climax came. "The crust of the earth rose and ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... the boat rested on the cross-pieces. The motion-picture camera was transferred so as to command a view of the lower side of the barrier, then the boat was carefully tilted, and slid forward, a little at a time, until she finally gained headway, nearly jerking the rope from our hands, and shot into the ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... upon the heated sky above the old grey walls; like a fiery sunset, it might seem, as he looked back over the ashen intervening years. To Charles's successor (he and [136] the Queen-mother now delightfully secure from fears, however unreasonable, of Charles's jerking dagger) the day became a sweet one, to be noted unmistakably by various pious and other observances, which still further fixed the thought of that Sunday on Gaston's mind, with continual surmise as to the tendencies of so complex and perplexing ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... and less mossy place in the woods, I am amused with the golden-crowned thrush,—which, however, is no thrush at all, but a warbler. He walks on the ground ahead of me with such an easy, gliding motion, and with such an unconscious, preoccupied air, jerking his head like a hen or a partridge, now hurrying, now slackening his pace, that I pause to observe him. I sit down, he pauses to observe me, and extends his pretty ramblings on all sides, apparently very much engrossed with his own ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... away," said I, jerking an old-fashioned bell-rope, and drawing the screen aside. Behind it, was what I had hoped would be there—a table laid for five, with plenty of nice glass and silver, and banked with pink and white roses. As everybody exclaimed at the sight, ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... colonel gave a murmuring remonstrance; "for," said he to Clara, whom his apostrophe to Flitch had set smiling, "we're not safe with him, however we make believe, and he'll be jerking the heart out of me before he has done.—But if two of us have not the misfortune to be united when they come to the discovery, there's hope. That is, if one has courage and the other has wisdom. Otherwise they ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... slatting and flying out overhead with a might that shook the ship from stem to stern. The flaps of the mad canvas were like successive thumps of a giant's fist upon a mighty drum. The sheets were jerking at the belaying-pins, the blocks rattling in sharp snappings like castanets. You could hear the hiss and seething of the sea alongside, and see it flash by in sudden white patches of phosphorescent foam, while all overhead was black with the flying scud. The English ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... you? What a Lohengrin! Ach Gott! it is the prince himself. Boat"—and he stopped prancing in order to point his long forefinger at the Tenor's chest—"boat you are an actor born, my froind! You was the Prince of Devotion himself jus' now. You do that part as if you feel him too! Why"—jerking his head towards the cathedral with a gesture which signified that if he had not seen the thing himself he never could have believed it—"why, you loose yourself in there kompletely!" Then he asked the Tenor to sing again, which the Tenor did, being careful, however, not to give ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... "By Jove," shouted Drysdale, jerking himself in a sitting posture, and upsetting Jack, who went trotting about the room, and snuffing at Schloss's legs; "do you mean to say, Schloss, you were going to make me waistcoats at fourteen ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... mouse is placed on the branches of a tuft of thyme. By dint of jerking, shaking and tugging at the body, the Burying-beetles succeed in extricating it from the twigs and ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... be drawn steadily and slowly; not violently, or with a jerking motion. Such a place should be selected as will secure the child—if necessary—from the full blaze of a hot sun. This point might indeed be secured by having the carriage covered; but I am opposed to covered carriages, for children ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... impolite!" he said insinuatingly. "Here you've been wantin' to go an' I've been keepin' your hat!" He dumped the ballots upon the table and passed the hat to Dunlavey. Without a word Dunlavey took it, jerking it savagely, placed it on his head, and strode to the door, stepping down ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... tie you up to a tree and lash you!" said Isom, jerking angrily at his horse. "I don't know what ever made me pity your mother and keep her out of the poorhouse by takin' in a loafer ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... hit's that varmint Tusk Potter. I hain't afeerd ter tell. His shack's back thar;" jerking his thumb over his shoulder, "or, I'd ought ter say, what's left of hit's thar. ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... you jerking your shoulders and coughing, and grunting, and going on that way for, dad? Why ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... half a mile away and look like a covey of swift birds, but it is still a fine sight. I became very fastidious as to which moment of it was the finest, whether when the horse rose in profile, or when his aerial hoof touched the ground (with the effect of half jerking his rider's head half off), or when he showed a flying heel in perspective; and I do not know to this hour which I prefer. But I suppose I was becoming gradually spoiled by my pleasure, for as time went on I noticed that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... unconstrained person in the room; he hardly looked surprised; his glance was merely inquiring. Edwards apparently couldn't stand it. He jumped up and began his characteristic pacing of one end of the constricted place, jerking out as he walked, ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... it funny?" cried Vanessa, jerking Sir Joseph's arm in which hers was locked. "Of course the Tribes are on our side too, but they ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... detailed account of the night spent with the maiden. Roar on roar rose the boisterous chorus: "Blow the man down, bullies, blow him right down!" The big patched, dirty sails went jerking and flapping up toward the stars, which from here were so faint they could barely be seen. And the ship moved out ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... man somewhat shy of speaking of himself, even before those who knew him best, and whom he loved the most; but at last it burst forth from him, and with a somewhat jerking eloquence he declared that he could not, would not, ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... with canvas-covered suitcases. Three goggled, sunburned women in ugly khaki suits were disconsolately drinking soda water from bottles without straws, and a goggled, red-faced, angry-looking man was jerking impatiently at the hood of the machine. Lorraine and her suitcase apparently excited no interest whatever in ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... unborn child. She was repeatedly presented to the medical classes in the city. No pregnancy existed, as was revealed by a post-mortem examination. She imposed upon the credulous by the habit she had acquired of jerking her muscles at pleasure, and thus closely simulating the movements ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... hers. She had peculiar hands, small, with a strange, delightful silkiness. Often they were cool or cold; generally they lay unmoved within his clasp, but then they were instinct with life, not inert. Sometimes he would feel a peculiar jerking in his pulse, very much like electricity, when he held her hand. Occasionally it was almost painful, and felt as if a little virtue were passing out of his blood. But that he ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... he's the only happy man I know of in New Orleans to-day," said the little rector, jerking his head and drawing a ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... up with his back to a tree. While they were growling and barking around the tree Gleeson dismounted, and, going behind the tree, seized the "old man" by the tail. The kangaroo kept springing upwards and at the dogs, dragging Gleeson after him, who was jerking the tail this way and that to bring his game to the ground, for the "old man" was so tall that the dogs could not reach his throat while he stood upright. Philip gave his horse to McCarthy and approached the "old ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... really believe," replied Alfred; "a gale of wind at sea sounds very awful when down below jerking about in your hammock, but when on deck, you don't care a fig about it. Now the rifles are all loaded, and we may go to bed and sleep sound." They did retire to rest, but all parties did not sleep ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... sitting. Miller, who thought the left hand of the psychic was not in place, twitched the string which he held, and immediately Mrs. Smiley began to twist and sigh, and "Maud" complained that her mamma had been injured by the jerking of the thread by Professor Miller, and said that the sitting would have to stop. We lighted up and found the psychic apparently suffering keenly from a severe cramp all through her left side, and a good deal of rubbing was necessary ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... went on, jerking his thumb upward toward the palace above, "they will realize that the vengeance of the yellow man costs his enemies dear. Prepare to die, John Carter, but that your end may be the more bitter, know that I may change my intention as to meting a merciful death to your ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... her pennies and nickels and dimes. They land on her head and one takes her on the nose. And her voice dies away like a baby bird falling out of a nest. And she stands still—jerking her mouth and the pennies falling all around her. And a cynical-looking youth bounces out and picks them up. Bravo! She tried to bow and slipped. Another round of applause for that. All right, take her away. What did she sing? What ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... wall, and left a chasm many feet wide, which the horse could not see until it had climbed to the top of the wall, and as turning back was out of the question, the only alternative was to give a vigorous bound on to the narrow ledge beyond. Terrified as I felt, I luckily refrained from jerking Helen's head, or attempting to guide her in any way. The only chance of safety over New Zealand tracks, or New Zealand creeks, is to leave your horse entirely to itself. I have seen men who were reckoned good riders in England, get the most ignominious tumbles from ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... as Lieutenant Trent got, for Dave, making a sudden leap at his superior, seized him by the collar, jerking him backward a few feet and ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... Their captors were so completely surprised, and so very frightened that they had not thought of their rifles, which were leaning against convenient trees. And now came the very demonstration that Captain Wilson had been afraid of. Jerking himself loose from the detaining hands of his comrades, Rodney picked up a heavy switch lying on the ground near the log that Bud had ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... opened and a huge hose came slowly down. Odin watched it on the screen. It seemed to have been pleated and shoved together like an accordion. Now it opened out in little jerking movements, extending itself about two feet at each writhing twitch. As it grew longer it expanded and was nearly three feet across when it reached the top of the first car. A round door opened. Unseen hands reached the end of the big ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... I 'ad to 'ave one. Thash 'ow 'twas, see! Shorry to be in thish disgrashful state ... thish sad occas'n, gemmem. Very shorry! I thank you!" He turned to leave them, staggering towards the door. "I ain't been a good 'usban' to 'er," he went on, again making the jerking gesture over his shoulder with his thumb. "Thash a fac'. I ain't. But I 'pologise. I'm shorry! Can't say no more'n that, can ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... swept around the corner, jerking her hat, and her hand flew up to it. There was a fair stream of passers-by even here, and occasionally one turned for a backward glance at her standing there ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... waxed old and grey, Bent and weak with years. There came a certain day That she lay upon her bed Shaking her palsied head, With words she gasped to say Which had to stay unsaid. 130 Then with a jerking hand Held out so piteously She gave a ring to me Of gold wrought curiously, A ring which she had worn Since the day I was born, She once had said to me: I slipped it on my finger; Her eyes were keen to linger On my hand that slipped it on; 140 Then she sighed one rattling sigh And stared on with ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... the next two weeks, Colin found himself again fast to a tuna, but was unable to land any of the three. His first he lost by jerking too quickly at the strike. The second walked away with his entire six hundred feet of line at the first rush, and probably was a fish beyond the rod and reel capacity, and the third broke the line ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... had reasons for my silence; she was one of them," jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the parlor above, whence the voice of the amiable Gwendolin Makepeace floats ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... you be pleased?" persisted her husband, jerking his head explanatorily in the direction in which ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... contents as a famished tigress might have sprung upon some long-sought prey. Jerking the box out of Mrs. Carleton's hands, she put it on the ground, and again raised her sword. "Hence," she cried, "all of you; no one enters here. Ha, what do I see; stop, stop," she screamed. "Donna Inez, my lady, Donna Inez. Where did you get that ring," ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... railway-sleepers, filled within and daubed without with mud, to support the last of the girders as those were riveted up. In the little deep water left by the drought, an overhead-crane travelled to and fro along its spile-pier, jerking sections of iron into place, snorting and backing and grunting as an elephant grunts in the timber-yard. Riveters by the hundred swarmed about the lattice side-work and the iron roof of the railway-line, hung from invisible staging under the bellies of the girders, clustered round the ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... chaffing look went, like a candle-flame blown out; and a coppery flush spread over it. For some seconds he did not speak, then, jerking his head towards the picture, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... long hours of the stormy night he sat there, soothing and comforting her, as he would have soothed a terror-stricken child. By and by her clinging hands grew passive in his, her rigid, jerking limbs relaxed, and she fell into a feverish sleep broken by fitful sobs and smothered outcries. As Dan sat there, with her helpless weight against him, and gently stroked the wet black hair from her brow, something fierce and protective stirred in him, the quick instinct of the chivalrous strong ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... hopes preyed upon her in their keen, fictitious exaltations; the alternations of despair brought her to the brink of the grave. She was reduced almost to a shadow; she would go about the affair—she would entertain no other—with a sort of jerking, spasmodic activity as unlike muscular energy as if she were an automaton. She had no rest in her sleep, and would scream and cry out in weird accents at intervals, and dream such dreams! She would blanch ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... were alluding to the jerking movement of my hand every time I try to reach for anything? This arises from a terrible experience which I had. Just imagine, this daughter of ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... 'hish-ish'ing for, Aunt Nancy, I'm not saying anything, and your breath spins into a fellow's ear enough to give him an ear-ache!" said Dr. Solomon, jerking his head away. ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... this? A close palkee, with a passenger; the bearers, with elbows sharply crooked, and calves all varicose, trotting to a monotonous, jerking ditty, which the sirdar, or leader, is impudently improvising, to the refrain of Putterum, ("Easy now!") at the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the defendant, an' for the purposes of the forthcomin' action your name's John Doe. You four other characters are the jury, an' that don't leave nothin' for me to be except plaintiff, prosecutin' attorney, judge, an' court bailiff." Jerking his gun from its holster the cowboy grasped it by the barrel and rapped loudly upon the bar: "O yes! O yes! You bet! Court is now open! The first case on the docket is Horatio Benton, alias Tex, vs. John Doe, John Doe's brother, an' the Red ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... system of Taxation of this country and every individual figure in the National Debt, I'll get upon your back and ride you like a horse!" which it's my belief he would have done and even actually jerking his neat little legs ready for a spring as it was. "This," says Mr. Buffle without his pen "is an assault and I'll have the law of you." "Sir" replies the Major "if you are a man of honour, your Collector of whatever may be due on the Honourable Assessment by applying to Major Jackman at ...
— Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy • Charles Dickens
... stumble. They were heavy and certain. Mrs. Brenner snatched at the shoes, gathered them up, and turned to run. But one of the lacings caught on a nail on the shelf. She jerked desperately at the nail, and the jerking loosened her hold of both the shoes. With a clatter they fell at ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a long while, he selected and read aloud a passage from Carlyle, one of his very worst; abrupt, nervous, jerking, and at the same time windy, long-drawn-out, and parenthetical; a period ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... evidently going to be done to relieve the ship of all the loose top hamper flying about aloft, which threatened every moment to drag the masts out of her, for everything was swaying to and fro, and the topsails jerking terribly as they swelled out, the clews fouling the reef points as the wind threw them up, and all getting mixed in irretrievable confusion from the continual slatting of the canvas—for the whole of the running gear, having been let go, was now dangling about in all ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... in his saddle. He glanced over his shoulder, and Stonor saw that a sickly yellow tint had crept under his skin. He looked at Stonor's failing horse. Suddenly he clapped heels to his own beast, and, jerking the animal's head round, circled Stonor and attempted to regain the trail behind him. He evidently counted on the fact that the policeman would be unable ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... enough. I even went to the miners' lavatory and, jerking down the metal mirror, scrutinized my own reflection and reassured myself of the closeness of the resemblance. My purpose framed in my mind as I did this. Clearly I was in German quarters and was likely to remain there. Sooner or later there ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... erect there, and with intensely eager eyes gazed off towards the spot where the chase had last been descried. Likewise upon the extreme stern of the boat where it was also triangularly platformed level with the gunwale, Starbuck himself was seen coolly and adroitly balancing himself to the jerking tossings of his chip of a craft, and silently eyeing the vast ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... dupes,—it might have seemed wonderful how Herr Heuschrecke should be named a Rath, or Councillor, and Counsellor, even in Weissnichtwo. What counsel to any man, or to any woman, could this particular Hofrath give; in whose loose, zigzag figure; in whose thin visage, as it went jerking to and fro, in minute incessant fluctuation,—you traced rather confusion worse confounded; at most, Timidity and physical Cold? Some indeed said withal, he was 'the very Spirit of Love embodied': blue earnest eyes, full of sadness and kindness; purse ever ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... at my line, and swept off with it into deep water. Jerking it up, I saw a fine pickerel wriggling in the sun. "Uncle!" I cried, looking back in uncontrollable excitement, "I've got a fish!" "Not yet," said my uncle. As he spoke there was a plash in the water; I caught ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... so that he might not be observed from the outside, watched the stranger's approach in anxious silence. Nearer and nearer he came, till in that still air it was possible to hear the panting of his huskies as they lunged forward in the traces, jerking their bodies to right and left as they desperately strove to escape the descending lash of the punishing whip. The man himself tottered as he ran, stubbing the toes of his snowshoes every now and then as he took a new step. Once from sheer ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... running-boards loaded with canvas-covered suitcases. Three goggled, sunburned women in ugly khaki suits were disconsolately drinking soda water from bottles without straws, and a goggled, red-faced, angry-looking man was jerking impatiently at the hood of the machine. Lorraine and her suitcase apparently excited no interest whatever ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... his hands across the chest, with the tips of the middle fingers touching and the elbows extending on each side like a jug handle. Another player tries to pull the arms apart, either by working at them separately or together. Jerking is not permissible; the pull must ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... the inquirer, jerking his flies off the water, and throwing again with a heavy, sullen ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... thrusting its long lean head straight out, so Vaughan pulled hard. But the harder the boy pulled the faster the horse moved. And it could move. Vaughan had never had such an uncomfortable few minutes in his life. Every part of the horse seemed to be moving by itself, and jerking him in all directions. He couldn't possibly sit in the saddle. He let the stirrups take all his weight and just hung on. The horse ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... by the cherry-tree," said Myles, jerking his head in that direction. "An I may go get it, I will trouble ye no more." As he spoke he made a ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... quickly as it went. It bustled back into the hut, hopping nervously, and jerking its head with excitement. In a moment it was perched again on the man's shoulder. It carefully kept its bushy tail out of the way of his nose and eyes. And then it whispered what it had seen into ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... ignite; then waving a scornful and abjuring hand toward the staircase—the unhappy Tansey, erstwhile champion in the prophetic lists of fortune, ingloriously ascending to his just and certain doom, while (let us imagine) half within the wings stands the imminent figure of Fate jerking wildly at the wrong strings, and mixing things up in ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... chewing action—one which, joined with his habitual silence, gave him an almost malignant expression. His grey hair hung in tufts over a low forehead. His very small and immobile eyes glowed dully, like coals in which the flame has just been extinguished by water. He walked heavily, jerking his clumsy frame at every step. Some of his movements called to mind the awkward shuffling of an owl in a cage, when it feels that it is being stared at, but can scarcely see anything itself out of its large yellow eyes, blinking between sleep and fear. An ancient ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... beset that he could not think of anything but himself. One day, while sauntering along a campus path, with his hands in his pockets, he met two students coming toward him. They went to right and left, and, jerking his hands from his pockets, roared in each ear, "How dare you walk with ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... were left alone with the two Jivros, who stood beside the nude figure of the alien Croen. They eyed us, their eyes jerking nervously from our faces to the body of the Croen. Quite calmly the Prince tugged a vibro-gun, very like the weapon Holaf had worn at his waist, from his belt and trained it upon ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... talk it all out with Allan, and I do not think I ever missed him so much as I did that day. I am afraid I was rather impatient with Jack that morning; to be sure she was terribly awkward and inattentive; she would put her elbows on the table, and ink her fingers, and then she had a way of jerking her hair out of her eyes, which drove me nearly frantic. I began to think we really must send her to school. We had done away with the folding doors, they always creaked so, and had hung up some curtains in their stead; through the folds I could catch glimpses of dear ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... all waggs that divulge the secrets of Priscian and make merry with their teachers. This stuck so with Triplet that all his life-time he never forgave the doctor, but sent him every New Year's tide an anniversary ballad to a new tune, and so in his turn avenged himself of his jerking pedagogue."[168:2] ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... running race when the horses have got half a mile away and look like a covey of swift birds, but it is still a fine sight. I became very fastidious as to which moment of it was the finest, whether when the horse rose in profile, or when his aerial hoof touched the ground (with the effect of half jerking his rider's head half off), or when he showed a flying heel in perspective; and I do not know to this hour which I prefer. But I suppose I was becoming gradually spoiled by my pleasure, for as time went on I noticed ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... not over spry; and the consequence was that our big main-course was slatting and flying out overhead with a might that shook the ship from stem to stern. The flaps of the mad canvas were like successive thumps of a giant's fist upon a mighty drum. The sheets were jerking at the belaying-pins, the blocks rattling in sharp snappings like castanets. You could hear the hiss and seething of the sea alongside, and see it flash by in sudden white patches of phosphorescent foam, while all overhead was black with the flying scud. The English second-mate was stamping ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... love," he greeted me, smiling and jerking his head in the direction of Giuliana. "We ever return to it in the end, they say; yet you had best have a care. It is not well to cross my Lord Pier Luigi in such matters; he can be a very ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... poor Indian women, trotting across the square, their black hair plaited with dirty red ribbon, a piece of woollen cloth wrapped about them, and a little mahogany baby hanging behind, its face upturned to the sky, and its head going jerking along, somehow without its neck being dislocated. The most resigned expression on earth is that of an Indian baby. All the groups we had seen promenading the streets the day before were here collected by hundreds; ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... falling as fast and as hard as he otherwise would have done, because being spread out so flat that way, the air held him up a little. And then there was his tail, that funny little tail he is so fond of jerking when he scolds. This helped him too. It helped him keep his balance and keep ...
— The Adventures of Buster Bear • Thornton W. Burgess
... back to his seat amid a chorus of happy screams. The grubby boy was just too astonished to cry, just too proud of travelling in a carriage. He screwed up his face—and unscrewed it again. Every now and then Tommy sat back as far as he could from the disorder, the collection of jerking arms and legs, in order to adjust the Plymouth spectacles, of which he is so proud, on his small pug nose. As we passed the cross-roads, Straighty was trying to snatch a kiss. While we drove along the Front, the children waved their hands over the sides of the drosky, ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... with the words, jerking his meagre body upright with a slight, fierce movement, and stood in front of ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... astonishing to see how little musical talent is exhibited by these little ones, whose natures are drawn from the land of music. We have repeatedly seen them sawing away patiently at a violin, or jerking the strings of a harp, but could detect no semblance of melody in the noise they made. Not a few of the little ones endeavor to make up in dancing what they lack in musical skill. Their parents or proprietors ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... the old Mission garden stood staring at Ignacio Chavez a long time, seeming compelled by a force greater than her own to watch him tugging and jerking at his bells. Plainly enough she understood that this was an alarm being sounded; a man dead through violence, and the bell-ringer stirring the town with it. But when presently he let two of the ropes slip out of his hands and began a slow, mournful tolling of ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... instant his feet struck bottom he saw the pocket-miner's arm leap out, and his own legs knew a swift, jerking grip that overthrew him. In the nature of the jump his revolver-hand was above his head. Swiftly as the grip had flashed about his legs, just as swiftly he brought the revolver down. He was still in the air, his fall ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... blackness of a narrow alley into the silent street beyond. And on up this we passed, until at last we paused at the gateway of a cottage on our left. On to the door of that we went, my friend first violently jerking the bell, then opening the door with a night-key, and with me lifting the still senseless woman through the hall into a dimly lighted room upon the right, and laying her upon a clean white bed that glimmered in the corner. He reached and turned the gas on in a flaring jet, and ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... started timidly forward and then hesitated and trembled. A wave hit her, and she rocked like a cork. The jump had all gone out of her. Another wave struck her and almost hove her down, and then another wave snapped her back again, jerking out the funnel, which hissed overside into the sea. Half on her side, she clanked into the trough. She struggled to right herself and had partly succeeded, when a mighty wave smote her viciously on her listed side. She went over to ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... have I watched the formation of these pits, and will try to describe the process. The insect begins describing a small circle on the surface of the sand by jerking himself backwards and flinging the sand away with his flat head and closed forceps, which form a kind of shovel. Each circle is smaller than the last, until the pit is like an inverted cone, and the ant-lion ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... body was vibrating, traversed by a jerking and a trembling; he got up and approached the ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... asked Berry, jerking his head in the direction of the inn, which stood at the corner between two roads, its sign hanging under a bare horse-chestnut ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... get his head out of his own light, the bird would startle him by a queer kind of puffing sound. She would not leave her nest like most birds, but really tried to blow or scare the intruder away; and after repeated experiments I could hardly refrain from jerking my head back when that little explosion of sound came up from the dark interior. One night, when incubation was about half finished, the nest was harried. A slight trace of hair or fur at the entrance led me to infer that some small animal was the robber. A weasel might have done it, as they sometimes ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... distinct movements. This, however, is not the correct idea. The inhalation is continuous, the entire chest cavity from the lower diaphragm to the highest point of the chest in the region of the collar-bone being expanded with a uniform movement. Avoid a jerking series of inhalations, and strive to attain a steady, continuous action. Practice will soon overcome the tendency to divide the inhalation into three movements, and will result in a uniform continuous breath. You ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... extended his left hand for the piece of lighted stick; with his right hand he held his line. Suddenly that hand received an amazing tug. Peegwish unintentionally scattered the firebrand, dropped his pipe from his lips, and uttered a shout, while with both hands he held on to the jerking line. ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... bullet missed me, while mine struck him in the breast. He reeled and fell, but before he had fairly touched the ground I was upon him, knife in hand, and had driven the keen-edged weapon to its hilt in his heart. Jerking his war-bonnet off, I scientifically scalped him in ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... Merry, almost jerking out her words in excitement: "Father and mother have been obliged to ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... the tillers of the neighbouring lands let empty the jakes, to manure their fields withal; whereto whenas Buffalmacco came nigh, he went up to the brink of one of them and taking the opportunity, laid hold of one of the physician's legs and jerking him off his back, pitched him clean in, head foremost. Then he fell a-snorting and snarling and capering and raged about awhile; after which he made off alongside Santa Maria della Scala till he came to Allhallows Fields. There he found Bruno, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the oldest of all in point of wits. I had a claim on Eddy: one day he was amusing himself by jerking a cat at the end of a string, in and out of Frau Belgarde's well. She was stealthily approaching him with a piece of fence rail when I arrived and possibly prevented some broken bones. "Kaiser" was nearly twelve; he too had been in a reform school—he ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... to find the leak, he was alarmed to discover a quantity of codfish and porpoises swimming about in the hold, because he knew that the hole in the hull must be very large indeed to admit the fish. And still the water rose steadily all the time, although Bradley's pump was jerking away at it in a terrific manner and all the other pumps were ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... noticing anything beyond her own household, had not as yet noticed this. "And she's got the twins with her, . . . yes, there's Davy leaning over the dashboard grabbing at the pony's tail and Marilla jerking him back. Dora's sitting up on the seat as prim as you please. She always looks as if she'd just been starched and ironed. Well, poor Marilla is going to have her hands full this winter and no mistake. Still, I don't see that she ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of two pieces of hard wood, suitably worked, and forming an angle frame. On the bottom side the stretcher poles rest, and the sides of the L formed by the carrier proper prevent most effectually any jerking or turning of the stretcher when once it has been laid in the carrier. The carrier is about thirty inches long, but can be increased to any length desired. It has been found that this length is admirably ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... from nether hell and filled with ice, Roaring and crashing on the jerking stage, An utter bridle given to utter vice, Limitless power mad with endless rage Withering the soul; a minute seemed an age. He clutched and hacked at ropes, at rags of sail, Thinking that comfort was ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... he keeps moderately near the wall, but after a time you find that the circle described by his footsteps has grown smaller, and that he apparently fancies himself walking around a rather small tree. Your master rides up as you are pulling and jerking your left rein in the endeavor to come nearer to the wall, and says, "Try Billy's canter. I'll take a round with you. Strike him on the shoulder, and when you want him to trot, shorten your reins and touch him on the flank. Those ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... This wants looking into. For, if Stanton called me that, it must be true!—for he is nearly every time right!" He took his seat, and excused himself, jerking out as he stalked forth, glad to be quit ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... fact it has waited. I have not yet made another holiday to visit it. Whether or no the market-women and the local policeman had beheld, I know not. I hope not, but now shall never know. . . . The engine-driver, leaning in converse with the station-master, and jerking a thumb backward, had certainly beheld. But I passed him with averted eyes, gave up my ticket, and struck straight across country for ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... stood poised, one foot on the ground, the other on the stool, both hands gripping the high shelf, she felt the reptile whipping, writhing, jerking, lashing, flogging at her ankle and instep, coiling round her leg.... And in the fraction of a second the thought flashed through her mind: "If its head is under my foot, or too close to my foot for its fangs to reach me, I am safe while I remain as I am. If its head is free ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... light shone eerily overhead. He bent his stiffened, jerking neck till he could look—till he could see, with eyes that were filled with flashing fires of their own, other ripping blue flashes from the ends of outstanding wires, and above him a thousand feet, the ...
— The Hammer of Thor • Charles Willard Diffin
... I'll just tell mamma of you," exclaimed Enna, passionately, jerking her hand away ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... was dancing, and the shadow of Ansell, who stood close up to it, seemed to dominate the little room. He was still talking, or rather jerking, and he was still lighting matches and dropping their ends upon the carpet. Now and then he would make a motion with his feet as if he were running quickly backward upstairs, and would tread on the edge of the fender, so that the fire-irons ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... but I suppose I must humour her this once. Good-afternoon!" And, having given me her hand in her demure, old-fashioned way, Dorothy hurried off, the kitten still perched upon her shoulder, its tail jerking spasmodically ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... Stillman, "may remind us that it is time to splice the 'main brace.' There's a bottle of whisky and some water just behind you," he added to Deepwaters, "while three minutes after I ring this bell," he said, pressing a button and jerking a handle marked '8,' "the champagne cocktails will be on ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... door was the man against whom Maggie had collided. She saw that he was young, thick-set and restless. She noticed even then his eyes, bright and laughing as though he were immensely amused. His mouth opened and closed again, his eyes were never still, and he made fierce dumb protests with his body, jerking it forward pulling it back, as a rider strives to restrain an unruly horse. Maggie was able to notice these things, because during the first moments her Aunt Anne entirely held the stage. She advanced to the fireplace with her halting movement, embraced ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... up, from the opposite direction, yet another car, jerking to a standstill at the door. It caught the girl's notice; her vague thought was that it was William, come a little early. But she saw at once that this was a strange vehicle, a hired one by the look of it, and consciousness dreamed out ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... voice shouting dropped down to him. Jerking his head up he made out the form of Lieutenant Max at the top of this devil's stairway down which he had just come. Drennen laughed shortly and turned northward along the lake shore. He had lost time but he would lose no more. He still had two hours the best of it; it would take Max ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... Mr. Pat had severely punished him, revealing him humiliatingly to himself as a physical incompetent. He had dismissed Buck Klinker as a faintly amusing brother to the ox, and now Buck Klinker was giving him valuable advice about his editorial work, to say nothing of jerking him by the ears toward physical competency. He had thought to honor the Post by contributing of his wisdom to it, and the Post had replied by contemptuously kicking him out. He had laughed at Colonel Cowles's editorials, and now he was staying out of bed of nights ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... end of any given period, the child's mind would be a mere tabula rasa. Suppose, on the other hand, we failed to wipe out each other's teaching, the unfortunate youth would be launched upon life with half his guns pointed inboard and his needle jerking from one pole to the other. Consider the ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... upon the senses again, was this trombone note of the big machine. The floor never felt steady and quiet beneath one's feet, but quivered and jarred. It was a confusing, unsteady place, and enough to send anyone's thoughts jerking into odd zigzags. And for three months, while the big strike of the engineers was in progress, Holroyd, who was a blackleg, and Azuma-zi, who was a mere black, were never out of the stir and eddy of it, but slept and fed in the little wooden shanty between the ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... under the roof. The Sons of the Egg screamed and panicked. Jerking horribly, the monstrous thing moved again. For part of a second, it hovered over the empty camp. Then it ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... still kept on through gales, with creaking cordage and jerking tiller ropes, until on the 11th of March the Cape was sighted, off which they were knocked about until the 20th instant; lying in the track of vessels bounding before the gale at the rate of ten or twelve knots an hour, and only ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... a peal of chimes arose from the city as he found to be "maddening." All Genoa lay beneath him, and up from it, with some sudden set of the wind, came in one fell sound the clang and clash of all its steeples, pouring into his ears, again and again, in a tuneless, grating, discordant, jerking, hideous vibration that made his ideas "spin round and round till they lost themselves in a whirl of vexation and giddiness, and dropped down dead." He had never before so suffered, nor did he again; but this ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... men talked together, disputing about the pilots at first, and then about matters of local importance, in which Mary would have taken no interest at any time, and she gradually became drowsy; irrepressibly so, indeed, for in spite of her jerking efforts to keep awake, she sank away to the bottom of the boat, and there lay crouched on a rough heap of sails, rope, ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... her mouth all to the finest sort of kindling-wood, if she doesn't get up this very instant," said Sewell, jerking the reins so wildly that the mare leaped into a galvanic canter, and continued without further urging for twenty paces. "Of course, Lucy," he resumed, profiting by the opportunity for conversation which the mare's temporary activity afforded, "I should feel ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... man, tall and well-looking, dressed as an Oriental, but with an affected, jerking air, more French than Syrian, moved jauntily about the room, speaking to several persons for a short time, shrugging his shoulders and uttering commonplaces as if they were poignant originalities. This was Hillel Besso, the ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... closed, except the thumb and little finger, which are extended, and point straight toward the front, hands horizontal, backs upward, are held in front of their respective sides near the body, and then moved directly forward with, short, sharp jerking motions. (Dakota I.) "From the motion of the bear in running." This is also reported as an Arapaho sign. (Dakota IV.) The ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... wouldn't understan',' he said, jerking his thumb towards the barrel, 'but the ole man's such a dashed nuisance when he's on we gotter do somethin' with ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... anything else in life, get rid of worry. There are no greater enemies of harmony than little anxieties and petty cares. Do not flies aggravate a nervous horse more than his work? Do not little naggings, constantly touching him with the whip, or jerking at the reins, fret and worry him much more than the labor ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Ortez fell from him like a mask. He seized the cord with his own hand, jerking me prone upon the floor and commenced to drag me from the hall. A dozen willing hands lent aid. I clutched instinctively at everything which came in my way, being torn from each hold by the ruthless villains ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... he replied, jerking his hand towards the cab. 'But we mustn't start right here. This thing has got to be kept dark, don't you see, till the ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... assume when he had left his opponent without a move. On the top of the box beside him sat a very ascetic-faced, yellow, hollow-eyed man of fifty, with prim lips and a shrunken skin, which hung loosely over the long jerking tendons under his prominent chin. He was dressed in snuff-coloured clothes, and his legs under his knee-breeches were of a ludicrous thinness. He shook his head at me with an air of sad wisdom, and I could read little comfort in his inhuman ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... afear'd, nuthin's goin' ter happen to yer," he said, jerking her savagely, and almost breaking into a run at ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... while the groom stood at Ginger's head. He drew my head back and fixed the rein so tight that it was almost intolerable; then he went to Ginger, who was impatiently jerking her head up and down against the bit, as was her way now. She had a good idea of what was coming, and the moment York took the rein off the turret in order to shorten it, she took her opportunity, and reared up so suddenly that York had his nose roughly hit and his hat knocked off; the groom ...
— Black Beauty, Young Folks' Edition • Anna Sewell
... Elfreda. "Well, I like your impudence." Jerking herself from the girls' embrace she stood up and walked to the other side of the room. Stumbling over one of her shoes she kicked it viciously aside, then, leaning her head against the door, her ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... up with a start, rubbed his eyes and looked at the sun, then at the pile of fish beside him. The continued jerking of the line at his leg seemed to bring him out of his drowsiness. With a broad grin he began pulling in the line, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... half prancing, with his hands high, his elbows out, his face red, and his straw jerking about like a steam- engine. It might be showy form, I thought, but from the very little I knew of boxing it was not good. And the closer we approached the more convinced of this I was, and the more hope I seemed to have of coming out of ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... disturbed by the report of a gun, swept to leeward by the impetuosity of the gale, which hurled it with violence against the door and front windows of his cottage, for some moments causing them to vibrate with the concussion. Forster started up, dropping his book upon the hearth, and jerking the table with his elbow, so as to dash out the larger proportion of the contents of his tumbler. The sooty coronal of the wick also fell with the shock, and the candle, relieved from its burden, poured ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... to the jerking movement of my hand every time I try to reach for anything? This arises from a terrible experience which I had. Just imagine, this daughter of mine ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... give up anything easy, and so he brought the Scarboro into hailing distance and we told him what had happened. We had caught a Tartar; the whale wouldn't come to the surface and we couldn't let go without losing our line and iron. It was no use jerking on that line. One can't play a ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... in every direction, two lights left D'Aulnay's camp and approached him, jerking and flaring in the hands of men who were evidently walking over irregular ground. They might be coming directly to take possession of the trench. But why should they proclaim their intention with ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the devil's got into you? What business have you got with me, old fellow? What are you pounding me for? What are you jerking me along for? What do ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... What the deuce! thought Glover. A woman passenger in a dead sleeper? He balanced himself to the dizzy wheel of the truck under him, and waited for her to look his way—since she must be looking for the porter—but the head did not move. The curtains swayed with the jerking of the car, but the woman in Eleven looked intently into the dark stateroom. What did it mean? Glover determined ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... she cried angrily, stamping her foot and jerking at the necklace. But the string broke, and the beads went rolling away in the darkness in every direction and were lost—all but one, which she held ...
— The Legend of the Bleeding-heart • Annie Fellows Johnston
... tight, and at that loyal understanding pressure Cosgrave began to cry, shaking from head to foot, jerking out his ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... waitress with whom she had had no previous word, sprang to her succor, a big, red hand of mercy jerking ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... nothing. Immediately I flashed the light at the camera, and along the aisle, but again there was nothing visible. I wheeled 'round, shooting the beam of light in a great circle about the place; to and fro I shone it, jerking it here and there, ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... had found it possible immediately to join her at her home. Shelby had assented to this plan, and directly set about escorting her to her destination. No dread of Ludlow prompted this vigilance. He discerned that that glamour had forever waned. The woman's jerking nerves made him fear a collapse. Stripped of shams for once, ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... the world like a cross between a theatrical Aminadab Sleek and Sir John Falstaff, with the stuffing omitted. When our hostess caught sight of me in this new garb, she rubbed her hands together in great glee, and, springing to her feet, gave vent to a perfect storm of laughter—jerking out between the explosions: ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... clear, but I did not heed the friendly advice. Three shots had missed me, and I knew that the canoe was jerking about too much with the current to admit of a ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... from the pickets, jerking his head toward the road behind him. For the first time Mark noticed that he had a basket on his arm, containing a ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... said, jerking his thumb in the direction of the court of mystery. "Eleven devils. Plenty ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... on a sudden (blinded doubtless by his inner flaw, or 'evil genius' as some name it), That King Henry is killed, That all is lost,—and flings down his Standard to shift for itself there! And, certainly enough, all had been lost, had all men been as he;—had not brave men, without such miserable jerking tic-douloureux in the souls of them, come dashing up, with blazing swords and looks, and asserted, That nothing was lost yet, that all must be regained yet. In this manner King Henry and his force got safely retreated, Parthian-like, from the pass of Coleshill and the ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... The distance was less than ten feet, and the loop spread, quick and true, over the head of the Japanese. But, swift though the action was, the Japanese had an instant to prepare himself. His right arm shot up. As Orme, jerking at the rope, tried to tighten the noose, the hand of the Japanese pushed it over his head and it slid over the side into the water. In a few seconds the swift boat had ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... warmed up by this time. He moved swiftly over to it, his body jerking in a peculiar, off-beat cadence as ...
— The Best Made Plans • Everett B. Cole
... mossy place in the woods, I am amused with the golden-crowned thrush,—which, however, is no thrush at all, but a warbler. He walks on the ground ahead of me with such an easy, gliding motion, and with such an unconscious, preoccupied air, jerking his head like a hen or a partridge, now hurrying, now slackening his pace, that I pause to observe him. I sit down, he pauses to observe me, and extends his pretty ramblings on all sides, apparently very much engrossed with his own affairs, but never losing sight of me. But ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... parts of the hay-loading machine, the things that lived in his mind until his hand had made them into facts, were blown away like dust. For a moment he watched the living riotous things and then, as though jerking himself back into a path from which his feet had wandered, hurried onward to the shop, looking as he went not into the branches of trees, but downward at the dust ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... the sleep of a healthy woman, with her child on her arm, until at dawn the closed flap of the tent yielded to a bounding shape. She opened her startled eyes to see Jim the blood-hound at the foot of the bed, jerking the mosquito-netting. He growled at the interlopers, not being able in his canine mind to reconcile their presence with his customary duty of waking his masters in that tent. A call and a whistle at the other side of the camp drew him away ...
— The Cursed Patois - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... clothing which at all interferes with the freedom of the waist. Lie down flat on your back. Place one hand lightly on the abdomen and the other upon the lower ribs. Inhale, through the nostrils, slowly, deeply, and evenly, without interruption or jerking. If this is done properly the abdomen will, gradually and without any trembling movement, increase in size, and the lower ribs will expand sideways, while the upper part of the chest and the collar-bones remain undisturbed. Now hold the breath, not by shutting the glottis, ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... and found the men feasting, as he thought, rather than jerking the meat, he reprimanded them, in his accustomed tones of severity. The men chanced to be the very worst and most desperate in the camp. Moranget accompanied his denunciations with still more irritating actions. He took from them the delicious morsels ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... withdrew her hand, and, whilst she waited, betrayed her impatience by a little jerking motion of the body, that threw her breast against the table, as if she would ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... a new plan. Instead of cutting the meat in strips, and drying it, (or jerking it, as the lumberers term it,) she roasted it before the fire, and hung it up, wrapping it in thin sheets of birch bark. The juices, instead of being dried up, were preserved, and the meat was more palatable. ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... was clear-headed enough. I even went to the miners' lavatory and, jerking down the metal mirror, scrutinized my own reflection and reassured myself of the closeness of the resemblance. My purpose framed in my mind as I did this. Clearly I was in German quarters and was likely to remain there. Sooner or later there must ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... pricking the sides of the oxen with a long, light stick, the end of which was armed with a dull goad. The proud beasts quivered under the child's small hand, and made the yokes and the straps about their foreheads groan, jerking the plough violently forward. When the ploughshare struck a root, the driver shouted in a resonant voice, calling each beast by his name, but rather to soothe than to excite them; for the oxen, annoyed by the sudden resistance, started forward, digging their broad forked feet into ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... the throng of spectators. Two of the players, one from each side, chosen for strength and dexterity, advanced. They hooked the ball together in their united bats and thus raised it aloft, until the bats were absolutely perpendicular. Then with a quick, jerking motion they shot it upward. Much might be gained by this first shot or stroke, but on this occasion the two players were equal, and it shot almost absolutely straight into the air. The nearest groups made a rush for ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... silent rumination and jerking of peanut shells upon the track, the group broke up its session, and adjourned by tacit understanding till the next ...
— Hooking Watermelons - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... an adequate idea of the intonation and pronunciation which Uncle Remus brought to bear upon this wonderful word. Those who can recall to mind the peculiar gurgling, jerking, liquid sound made by pouring water from a large jug, or the sound produced by throwing several stones in rapid succession into a pond of deep water, may be able to form a very faint idea of the sound, but it can not be reproduced in print. The ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... middle, where a gully had opened in the hill. Water flowed through the gap, and in order to get across one must pick a way carefully over the steep, wet slope. This, however, would save a toilsome climb, and Charnock, jerking the bag higher on his ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... least two hours long, and many a hitch did the Squire give me before it was over; that was the beginning of the little trick, which you see I have now, of jerking up a ...
— The Talkative Wig • Eliza Lee Follen
... geyser. Soon the flaccid organ began to slowly expand and show such a tendency to upward movements that Challenger fastened the cords which held it to the trunks of the surrounding trees. In half an hour a good-sized gas-bag had been formed, and the jerking and straining upon the thongs showed that it was capable of considerable lift. Challenger, like a glad father in the presence of his first-born, stood smiling and stroking his beard, in silent, self-satisfied content as he gazed at the creation of his brain. It was ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in a nasal tone, came from the steps at his back. He started up, jerking sidewise to get out of reach of the hands that belonged to the voice, and clutching his book to him. But as he faced the speaker, who was peering down at him from the top of the steps, wonder took the place ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... and above them, eminent in majesty, the lion. Surely, he sat as 'twere on a high seat, and they like suppliants thronging the presence: this I saw, the heart on my ribs beating for Shagpat. And there appeared among the beasts a monkey all ajoint with tricks, jerking with malice, he looking as 'twere hungry for the doing of things detestable; and the lion scorned him, and I marked him ridicule the lion: 'twas so. And the lion began to scowl, and the other beasts marked the displeasure of the lion. Then chased ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... where he sank on the floor, shivering and cringing. Nearer and nearer roared the thunder, and the wind seemed as anxious to get into the house as he was eager to get out of it. Gradually his arms and legs ceased jerking, his head relaxed against an empty box, he laid his hand against the cheek that had been patted and ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... downward and I looked! I distinctly saw a lady's hand reached out toward my robe in the darkness, and this hand took hold of it and jerked it lightly just like this." The "Reverend Swami" here illustrated, by slightly jerking his coat downward. It was very amusing to hear him, in great seriousness, relate this in his low and measured accents to his ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... by the hearth," he answered, masking his own voice with hoarseness and jerking his thumb towards the settle. The girl's eyes followed the signal and saw for the first time the huddled figure on the bench. "I thank you," she said simply, and moved away into the background, her eyes fixed on the crouching form, her fingers clasped nervously, waiting ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the pipe from his mouth and spat once at the woodpile. Then, jerking his thumb toward the little window, ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... had already done him such good service, and he went through a preliminary drill, consisting of placing it inside his waistcoat, a couple of buttons being left carelessly unfastened; next thrusting his hand within, in an indifferent manner, then instantly jerking out and pointing the weapon at an imaginary foe in front of him. This maneuver he repeated scores of times, narrowly escaping the firing of the weapon, until he satisfied himself that he could ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... then a sour, severe reserve, full of angry and terrified suspicion of imaginary improprieties. Tittering shyness, all giggle-goggle and blush; stony and stolid stupidity, impenetrable to a ray of perception; awkward, angular postures and gestures, and jerking saltatory motions; Brobdingnag strides and straddles, and kittenish frolics and friskings; sharp, shrill little whinnying squeals and squeaks, followed by lengthened, sepulchral "O-h's"—all formed together such an irresistibly ludicrous picture as made "Les Anglaises pour Rire" ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... was evidently exerting himself to the utmost. Every now and then one might catch a glimpse of the scoundrel through the smoke. There he sat in the belfry upon the belfry-man, who was lying flat upon his back. In his teeth the villain held the bell-rope, which he kept jerking about with his head, raising such a clatter that my ears ring again even to think of it. On his lap lay the big fiddle, at which he was scraping, out of all time and tune, with both hands, making a great show, the nincompoop! of playing ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... what she is talking about!" he said, jerking certain boxes out of their places on the shelves, and then banging them back again, seeming to suppose that he was by this process putting his department in order for closing. "Little bit of a dressed-up doll! They will tear her into ribbons, ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... river, where they remained all the next day, sheltering themselves as well as they could from the rain and snow—a sharp foretaste of the impending winter. During their encampment, they employed themselves in jerking a part of the elk for future supply. In cutting up the carcass, they found that the animal had been wounded by hunters, about a week previously, an arrow head and a musket ball remaining in the wounds. In the wilderness, every trivial circumstance ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... studied weather-cocks. I take note that when one of them so-called fickle-minded inanimates goes jerking around the four cardinal points and feeling of what's between, it's just responding to the fore-running snorts of a pull-up and come-along cyclone. That's why I'm bobbing up and down like an ant looking for its long-lost brother. There's a cyclone on its ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... "Yours," said Mr. Parrott, jerking a stiff nod to the Cap'n, "is a morgidge on house and stable and land. Yours," he continued, with another nod at Hiram, "is a bill o' sale of all the furniture, dishes, liv'ry critters and stable outfit. Take it all and git what ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... close palkee, with a passenger; the bearers, with elbows sharply crooked, and calves all varicose, trotting to a monotonous, jerking ditty, which the sirdar, or leader, is impudently improvising, to the refrain of Putterum, ("Easy now!") at the expense ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... dark-brown wisps of hair which had been blown from beneath her cap straying about equally dark-brown, snapping eyes and caressing the corners of tightly pressed, momentarily impatient lips. Only a second she hesitated, then dived for the tonneau, jerking with all her strength at the heavy seat cushion, as he stepped to the running board ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... Latin blood. It was Beauregard, the victor of Bull Run, now second in command here, and he made a striking contrast to the stern and motionless Kentuckian who sat beside him and who was his chief. There was no uneasy play of Johnston's hands, no shrugging of the shoulders, no jerking of the head. He sat silent, his features a mask, while ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... speech and kiss had certainly appeared to impute suppressed insight, or penetration, or sly-pussness, or something of that sort to her young friend. But with an implied claim to rights of insight, on her own account, from seniority. Sally is froissee at this, but not beyond jerking the topic ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... him with a light rein," Keith cautioned, clinging to the subject. "He's tenderbitted, and nervous. He won't stand for any jerking, you see." ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... the rod such a jerk that the line flew back against me, and when I was getting ready to throw it out again, I found that one of the little hooks had stuck fast in my thumb. I tried to take it out with the other hand, but it was awfully awkward to do, because the rod wobbled and kept jerking on it. The gilly asked me if there was anything the matter with the flies, but I didn't want him to know what had happened, and so I said, "Oh, no," and turning my back on him I tried my best to get the ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... shovels at the tips of their claws, powerful backs, capable of creating a little earthquake: the diggers need nothing more for the practice of their profession. Let us add—for this is an essential point—the art of continually jerking the body, so as to pack it into a lesser volume and make it glide through difficult passages. We shall soon see that this art plays a leading part in ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... Fitzpiers, and obliquely to the men, who had heard them often before. Marty, who poured out tea, was just saying, "I think I'll take out a cup to Miss Grace," when they heard a clashing of the gig-harness, and turning round Melbury saw that the horse had become restless, and was jerking about the vehicle in a way which alarmed its occupant, though she refrained from screaming. Melbury jumped up immediately, but not more quickly than Fitzpiers; and while her father ran to the horse's head and speedily began to control him, Fitzpiers was alongside ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... i got a fishhook in my leg today. me and Fatty Melcher was a fishing when we got our lines tangled, i hollered first cut, but i dident have enny nife and Fatty woodent let me have his nife. So we got jerking our lines kinder mad like and all of a suddin the hook got into my leg. gosh you bet it hurt. me and Fatty got the hook out but it bled some. the worst of it was there was a wirm on the hook and when we got the hook out they wasent enny wirm there. Fatty ...
— The Real Diary of a Real Boy • Henry A. Shute
... a child!" snapped Rosa, jerking her shoulder angrily away; "and you can never be my ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... protruding, and he was bleeding profusely. Some men were apparently trying to get him off the street. They had hold of his arms and the other leg, but were jumping and dodging at every shell that exploded, jerking and twisting this dangling leg to his horrible torture. I remember hearing him beseeching them to lay him down and let him die. They were probably a trio of cowards trying to get back from the front, and were using this wounded man to get away with, a not infrequent occurrence ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... minister's astonishment was so genuine that in jerking back his head his glasses slipped from his nose and dangled on ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... the man. "Glad to see a new customer, sir." He pocketed the money, and showed them, out, standing to look after them with a malicious leer as they disappeared, and jerking his left ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... red thread he thrust the chain into it, holding his hands as far apart as possible in the attitude of a player about to catch a bounced ball. But immediately the pain of that grew unendurable too, and he leaped back, jerking his hands away. He had succeeded only in blackening the steel and putting a big water blister on one of his wrists right where the shackle bolt would press ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... "Each man had about a dozen huge ostrich feathers in his helmet, a leopard or monkey-skin hung from his shoulders, while a large iron bell was strapped to his loins like a woman's bustle. This he rang during the dance, by jerking the hinder part of his body in the most absurd manner. All the time a hubbub was kept up by the shouting of the crowd, the blowing of horns, and the beating of seven nogaras, or drums, all of different notes, while each dancer also ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... are the following: he jerks the arm of the lady next him, the result being that she pours her cup of scalding hot tea over the knees of her neighbour, a testy old gentleman, who in his fright and pain raises his arms, jerking off with his cane the wig of a person standing at the back of his chair, who in the attempt to save his wig upsets his own cup and saucer upon the pate of his antagonist Another guest, with his mouth full of tea, witnessing this absurd contretemps is unable to restrain his laughter, the ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... to his fallen companion, who still lay where the lariat had thrown him. He was half stunned and covered with dust. After jerking him from his pony, however, the cowboys, though continuing their shouts of glee, had made no further effort to ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... by many signals and many whistlings, but no train came in. The locomotive had given out and the train had stopped a good way out of the station. The carpet not reaching so far, their Majesties were obliged to walk quite a distance on the wet platform. By means of shunting and jerking the royal train was brought in under the station roof, but nowhere near the carpet. The small steps were put up to the carriage door, and the King and Queen descended. The Emperor kissed the King on both cheeks. The Empress received the Queen affectionately and gave her a ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... in high-spirited distemper and flounced through the doorway. He rose from his mound of pillows, jerking his daring waistcoat into place, flinging each knee outward to adjust the knifelike trouser creases, swept backward a black, pomaded forelock and straightened an ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... observed Miss Twexby, affably, as she cut up the lemon; 'par's gone to sleep in the other room,' jerking her head in the direction of the parlour, 'but Mr Villiers went out in all the heat, and it ain't no wonder if he ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... should have some fitting relation to what he is at the moment saying. These movements will then be varied. When certain repeated actions, without this proper relation, are acquired, they are called mannerisms. They have no meaning, and are obtrusive and annoying. Repeated jerking or bobbing of the head, for a supposed emphasis; regularly turning the head from side to side, for addressing all the audience; nervous shaking of the head, as of one greatly in earnest; repeated, meaningless punching or pounding of the air, always in the same way; shifting ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... state, I wouldn't put in every one's 'ands, for, in the fust place, he's wery walueous, and in the second, he requires an ossman to ride; howsomever, as I knows that you can ride, and if you doesn't mind taking my 'ead man,' jerking his elbow at Leather, 'to look arter him, I wouldn't mind 'commodatin' on you, prowided we can 'gree ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... like a jockey finishing a race, and the big stock horses went through the long grass like hawks swooping down on a flock of pigeons. The men carried their carbines loaded, holding them straight up over the shoulder so as to lessen the jerking of the wrist caused by ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... stalwart youths of about twenty-two or-three years of age, who at this moment came up the street with their instruments,—"These are our two sons. He is mine,"—indicating one with his reversed thumb; "and that other is his,"—jerking his head towards his companion. "And they, too, are going to play in company, as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... that most schoolroom work, till it has become habitual and automatic, is repulsive, and cannot be done without voluntarily jerking back the attention to it every now and then. This is inevitable, let the teacher do ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... rocking. Horace says, that he had a soul of brass who first ventured to sea; I think a body of iron very necessary to the outfit. My cot is swinging and jerking up to the beams, as if the lively scoundrel was some metamorphosed imp mocking at me. "Sarve you right—what did you list for?"—Very true—Why did I?—Well, anxious as I am to close this chapter, and to close my eyes, I will tell you, ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... with fright, Tess jumped from the porch and ran down the hill to the scene of the accident. When she arrived Waldstricker was jerking his steed savagely. ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... only son has hit him with a brick, jumped on his stomach, and then gone off with all his money, you have a pretty good notion of how poor old Izzy looked. He was staring at me across the room, and talking to himself and jerking his hands about. Whether he thought he was talking to me, or whether he was rehearsing the scene where he broke it to the boss that a mere stranger had got away with his Love-r-ly Silver Cup, I don't know. Whichever it was, he was ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... which looked out into the yard he could see the woodshed and everything that happened in the yard. Standing at the window, Skvortsov saw the cook and the beggar come by the back way into the yard and go through the muddy snow to the woodshed. Olga scrutinized her companion angrily, and jerking her elbow unlocked the woodshed and angrily ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the bed of the river six men clamped their peaveys into the soft pine; jerking, pulling, lifting, sliding the great logs from their places. Thirty feet below, under the threatening face, six other men coolly picked out and set adrift one by one, the timbers not inextricably imbedded. From time to time the mass creaked, settled, perhaps even moved a foot or two; but always ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... seemed, could come between the knife and Dick Bellamy—Dick who had come to her. And then she saw his left arm dart forward—an arm that seemed, on the floor, to shoot out to twice its natural length—and its fingers gripped Fridji's left ankle, jerking ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... marked off, depending midway from the shadow crossing it at right angles at the top, appeared a filmy, fine line, which undoubtedly was the shadow of a cord, and at the end of the cord dangled a veritable jumping-jack of a silhouette, turning and writhing and jerking, with a shape which in one breath grotesquely lengthened and in the next shrank up to half its former dimensions, which kicked out with indistinct movements of its lower extremities, which flapped with foreshortened strokes of the shadowy upper limbs, which altogether so contorted ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... Justitiarius," replied the old man, grinning all over his face, "but three days ago the heavy wainscot ceiling of the justice-hall fell in with a tremendous crash." "Then may the"—— My uncle was about to rip out a terrific oath in his violent passionate manner, but jerking up his right arm above his head and taking off his fox-skin cap with his left, he suddenly checked himself; and turning to me, he said with a hearty laugh, "By my troth, cousin, we must hold our tongues; we mustn't ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... flight of steps, they cluster like bees. Meanwhile (and especially on festa-days) the bells of the churches ring incessantly; not in peals, or any known form of sound, but in a horrible, irregular, jerking, dingle, dingle, dingle: with a sudden stop at every fifteenth dingle or so, which is maddening. This performance is usually achieved by a boy up in the steeple, who takes hold of the clapper, or a little rope attached to it, and tries to dingle ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
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