"Jerky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... friends if, by any chance, the posse should find his cave. He took my rifle. He can see them coming; he'll have every advantage against attack; and there's another way out of the cave, up on top of the hill. There's just one thing against him. There wasn't even a canteen here. He took some jerky and canned stuff—but only one measly beer bottle of water. When that's used up it's going to be a dull time for him. We can't get water to him very handy without leaving some sign. We mustn't get hostile ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... Fyodor Lukitch!" he said in a jerky voice, on seeing Sysoev. "How delightful! You have come in spite of your illness. Gentlemen, let me congratulate you, Fyodor Lukitch ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... gentle movement of the elevator is necessary. A jerky movement may change the direction of motion so suddenly as to produce dangerous air stresses upon the surfaces, in which case there ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... with a jerk, ran with increasing gait for a hundred yards, and then suddenly the jerky progress ceased. The machine swayed gently from side to side, and looking over, the passenger saw the ground ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... sat down on a wooden garden-seat, leaned on his elbow, and began to watch this door and Lisa's window. In the town it struck midnight; a little clock in the house shrilly clanged out twelve; the watchman beat it with jerky strokes upon his board. Lavretsky had no thought, no expectation; it was sweet to him to feel himself near Lisa, to sit in her garden on the seat where she herself had sat more ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... also the other qualification necessary to make a trustworthy seaman—that of an absolute confidence in himself. What was really wrong with him was that he had these qualities in an unrestful degree. His eternally watchful demeanour, his jerky, nervous talk, even his, as it were, determined silences, seemed to imply—and, I believe, they did imply—that to his mind the ship was never safe in my hands. Such was the man who looked after the anchors of a less than five-hundred-ton ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... were heard hurrying along the hall and a little jerky knock announced unmistakably the presence ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... deplorable is a candlestick of the same height as the andon, with a spike at the top which fits into a hole at the bottom of a "farthing candle" of vegetable wax, with a thick wick made of rolled paper, which requires constant snuffing, and, after giving for a short time a dim and jerky light, expires with a bad smell. Lamps, burning mineral oils, native and imported, are being manufactured on a large scale, but, apart from the peril connected with them, the carriage of oil into country districts is very expensive. No Japanese would think of sleeping without having ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... sort of thing, with red bars. It flashed over me in a second that that thing was a Rebel flag. It was not more than sixty yards to the right. The smoke around it was low and dense and kept me from seeing the man who was carrying it, but I plainly saw the banner. It was going fast, with a jerky motion, which told me that the bearer was on a double-quick. About that time we left. We observed no kind of order in leaving; the main thing was to get out of there as quick as we could. I ran down our company street, and in passing the big Sibley tent of our mess I thought of my knapsack ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... great solemnity. They begin to dance, first in a prone or bowing posture. They then raise themselves erect, look upwards, and wave their eagles' tails towards the sky, first with a slow, and then with a quick and jerky motion. At the same time, they strike their breast with a calabash fastened to a stick about a foot in length, which they hold in their left hand, while they wave the eagles' feathers with the right, and keep time by rattling pebbles in a gourd. ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... Nelson, with his eyes cast down, gave me the whole story of the Heemskirk episode in Freya's words; then went on in his rather jerky utterance, ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... about the square and heaped thick under the trees. The brick walls of many of the houses round were pitted and pocked and scarred by the shell fragments. The face of one house was marked by a huge splash, with solid center and a ragged-edged outline of radiating jerky rays, reminding one immediately of a famous ink-maker's advertisement. The bricks had taken the impression of the explosion's splash exactly as paper would take the ink's. Practically every window in the square had been broken, ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... first and second intermissions several men dropped in to speak to her mother and her—fellows who didn't ever come down town, but I could tell they knew who I was by the way they ignored me. It exasperated me to a pitch of fury, that coldly insolent air of theirs—a jerky nod at me without so much as a glance, and no notice of me when they were leaving my box beyond a faint, supercilious smile as they passed with eyes straight ahead. I knew what it meant, what they were thinking—that the "Bucket-Shop ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... jovial men have their moments of depression. R. Jones' face clouded, and jerky remarks about hardness of times and losses on the Stock Exchange began to proceed from him. As Scotland Yard had discovered, he lent money on occasion; but he did not lend it to youths in ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... a loss, had already climbed upon a low projection in the wall of one of the houses opposite. From this point of vantage he could more easily observe what went on inside the cabaret, and in short, jerky sentences he gave a description of what he ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... said, balancing herself, with outstretched arms, on the stone, and making it revolve in a queer, jerky fashion by pressing her feet on it as though it were a ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... with dismay that Bud was not responding very well, his feeble strokes were jerky and uncoordinated. "Must've lost pressure too fast when his ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... she burst out in a jerky, nervous fashion, "I—I came here on Wednesday—when you were out, and I—behaved badly—" She hesitated, broke down, looked at the door as though she would have dashed out through it, had it only been open, then in one rush poured out the words that had ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... glass with a jerky motion and downed the contents; the chaser stood disregarded before him and O'Brien regarded his patron with an eye ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... ever gather. Only English larks and linnets, cowslips and hawthorn, were to be found in the toy-books and little histories read to him. "Everything was British: even the robin, a domestic bird," wrote the doctor, "instead of a great fidgety, jerky, whooping thrush." But when Peter Parley, Jacob Abbott, Lydia Maria Child, Mrs. Embury, and Eliza Leslie began to write short stories, the Annuals and periodicals abounded in American ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... came. You read blunt, jerky sentences that told you Mark had died suddenly, in the mess room, of heart failure. Captain Symonds said he thought you would want to know exactly how it happened.... "Well, we were 'cock-fighting,' ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... Varin, in a rough, jerky voice that reminded me of his brother, "on the contrary, it was your letter that brought ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... and at the same time pale, a thing which always displeases me and which is, in fact, unpleasant; it impresses me as a sort of diseased healthfulness. Moreover, he had the slow yet jerky way of speaking that characterizes the pedant. Even his manner of walking, which was not that of youth and health, repelled me; as for his glance, it might be said that he had none. I do not know what to think of a man whose ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... bent his head and spoke in short, jerky sentences. "Her death came at the bitterest moment of want. It was Christmas time. Very cold and raw. We hadn't too much at home to keep us warm. She caught a cold and it settled on her chest. Pneumonia! Only three or four days altogether. She lay in the back room; it was quieter. The ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... times a week: indeed, in some places in Scotland where I have stayed when I was a girl, the post came in but once a month;—but letters were letters then; and we made great prizes of them, and read them and studied them like books. Now the post comes rattling in twice a day, bringing short jerky notes, some without beginning or end, but just a little sharp sentence, which well- bred folks would think too abrupt to be spoken. Well, well! they may all be improvements,—I dare say they are; but you will never meet with a ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... deep waters sinking to repose, Marcella felt herself a naked soul, alone on a wide sea, with shapes of pain and agony and revolt. She looked at the sleeping wife. "He, too, is probably asleep," she thought, remembering some information which a kindly warder had given her in a few jerky, well-meant sentences, while she was waiting downstairs in the gaol for Minta Hurd. "Incredible! only so many hours, minutes left—so far as any mortal knows—of living, thinking, recollecting, of all that makes us something as against ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... With a quick, jerky movement of the head, which set in motion the little rings of hair, now growing so fast, and brought his brother to his ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... his chair again, but only for a moment; then, drawing himself up, he hurried toward the door with a jerky step. ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... mason-wasps, that flew about loudly buzzing in their splendid gold and scarlet uniform. There were also many little shy birds here, and my favourite was the wren, for in its appearance and its scolding, jerky, gesticulating ways it is precisely like our house-wren, though it has a richer and more powerful song than the English bird. On the other side of the hedge was the potrero, or paddock, where a milch-cow with two or three horses were kept. The manservant, ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... boy looked very handsome, in a black velvet suit with lace ruffles at the wrists and knees, and long white stockings with black slippers. He was clever, too, in assuming the character, and walked with stiff, jerky strides, like a mechanical doll that had ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... tottering, the movements of the head and extremities jerky, not always co-ordinated, hence unsteady, inappropriate and spasmodic; her look is restless, objects are not definitely fixated. The normal functions of her mind are far inferior to those of a child of four years. The eight-year-old Margaret speaks only the word Mama; ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... that strange dynamic energy, sparing of words except that now and then he would talk to Hollister in brief jerky sentences, in a manner which implied much and revealed nothing. Mills always seemed on the point of crying out some deep woe that burned within him, of seeking relief in some outpouring of speech,—but he never did. At the most he ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... over to Yancey's plane. The gangling Texan was testing his rudder controls and flipping his ailerons with jerky movements ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... down there a coyote was protesting the crimes committed against his race. His yammering notes rose and fell, ascending and descending the full run of the scale, swelled into a throaty howl and broke into jerky, wailing yaps like a chorus of satyrs. The uninitiated could never have believed all those sounds came from one wolfish throat; it seemed that it must be that the entire pack, or at least half a dozen animals, raised ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... if she was about the house," Henley made reply, in a jerky sort of fashion. "There is a little matter I wanted to speak to ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... good-looking, rather vulgar-looking man. At a distance—say ten yards—his height, figure, and carriage gave him somewhat of a commanding appearance, but this was rather marred by a jerky, twitchy, uneasy sort of air, that too plainly showed he was not the natural, or what the lower orders call the real gentleman. Not that Sponge was shy. Far from it. He never hesitated about offering to a lady after a three ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... query before John Ward stalked through the fort door and stood at Dale's elbow. Speaking slowly and stressing his words in that jerky fashion that marks an Indian's ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... gliding through the mountains without the strain of piloting, the comfort of having the unseen, mysterious engineer up ahead automatically drive for her. She had caroled to her father about nearing the Pacific. Her nervousness had expressed itself in jerky gaiety. ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... printer's proofs at a desk by the window, came forward and welcomed him. Glory held his hand with her long hand-clasp and looked steadfastly into his eyes. His face twitched and her own blushed deeply, and then she talked in a nervous and jerky way, reproaching him for his ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... him," responded the officer, in his usual short, jerky way. "Lucky to catch you here, too, before you ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... cove, where a few men in dories were engaged in jigging for squid, pulling in the wriggling things which had been attracted by a piece of red rag, their tentacles caught upon the upturned needles of the jig. They were dropped with a sharp, jerky motion on the slimy mass of their fellows, all blotched with the inky discharge. Out beyond the rocky headlands, in the open sea, the little two-masted smacks were hurrying to anchor or already bobbing up and down with furled canvas, rising, falling and yawing to the pull of ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... one to free his arm, the other to retain his grip. Bellamy spurred his horse closer. The more powerful of the two, he slowly twisted around the imprisoned wrist. Inch by inch the revolver swung in a jerky, spasmodic circle. There was a moment when it pointed directly at the mine owner's heart. His enemy's finger crooked on the trigger, eyes passionate with the stark lust to kill. But the pressure on the wrist had numbed the hand. The weapon jumped out ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... air of tense, long waiting. Little is said, and then spoken in quick and jerky tempo, with ...
— Class of '29 • Orrie Lashin and Milo Hastings
... conscious before the eyes of the men, all of whom he knew by sight or by name, and not one of whom he had ever met before. But they all shook hands after it was over, and the assistant organist played the Wedding March, and one of the club men insisted in pulling a cheerful and jerky peal on the church bell in the absence of the janitor, and then Van Bibber hurled an old shoe and a handful of rice—which he had thoughtfully collected from the chef at the club—after them as they drove ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... he said, with spasmodic jocularity; "I'm uncommon glad to see you." He came to a jerky close, with an indrawing of his breath. "I'm about done," he went on. "Same old thing—sciatica. Took me just after I got here this afternoon; sent out one of the messengers to buy me a sofa, and here I've ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... narrow that the oars cannot work on the gunwale, but are rigged out on iron frames). Moreover, they rowed in a broad, heavy, clumsy-looking craft, with common oars like those used at sea, and they pulled a short jerky stroke, and had to go round a winding French course—indeed with apparently every disadvantage; yet they came in first, beating English ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... thin and jerky, and you never knew just where he would put his foot. Indeed, he was not certain himself. He was thoroughly illogical, and the question he asked would sometimes seem quite foreign to the subject ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... result was that they had to depend more and more upon a diet of meat. Men can hold up fairly well on meat alone, particularly if it has a fair amount of fat, but the effort of hunting and drying the flesh into jerky served ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... Stirling Castle, or as that other river which threads the Berkshire valley and runs, a perennial stream, through my memory,—from which I please myself with thinking that I have learned to wind without fretting against the shore, or forgetting cohere I am flowing,—sinuous, I say, but not jerky,—no, not jerky nor hard to follow for a reader of the right sort, in the prime of life and full possession of ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... there is great pain aggravated by movement, and the animal is usually stiff as though foundered, the pulse is quick and hard, the breathing abdominal, the chest being fixed so far as possible, the inspiration short and jerky, the expiration longer. The pain is caused by the friction of the dry, inflamed pleural surfaces of the lung and chest on each other. At this stage the ear detects a dry friction murmur, resembling somewhat the sound made by rubbing two pieces of sole ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... spectacles or eyeglasses. Henry looked older and feebler than any of the company. His scant hair hung in thin and long white locks, and his tall, slender figure had gained a still more meagre effect from his dress, while his shoulders were bowed in a marked stoop; his gait was rigid and jerky. He assisted himself with a gold-headed cane, and sat in his chair leaning forward ...
— The Old Folks' Party - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... servile position. Pottery was manufactured of excellent but simple patterns. Metal work was, of course, thoroughly understood, and the Anglo-Saxon swords and knives discovered in barrows are of good construction. Every chief had also his minstrel, who sang the short and jerky Anglo-Saxon songs to the accompaniment of a harp. The dead were burnt and their ashes placed in tumuli in the north: the southern tribes buried their warriors in full military dress, and from their tombs much of the little knowledge which we possess as to their habits is derived. ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... was so earnest, so close to him. He had a brief kaleidoscope of impressions—Ward's sullen bewilderment, Moulton's angry roar, Dio's jerky rise to his feet as the guards grabbed for ...
— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett
... bite his lips to bleeding-point, to keep back his groans, Frobisher contrived to raise himself to a sitting posture, and he then discovered that he was in a closed litter of some sort, or palanquin, which, he could tell by its short, jerky motion, was being borne over very ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... gradually neared them, though in a very jerky fashion, showing how unskilled the rower was, till, unhappily, glancing over his shoulder, he caught sight of the group awaiting them, and raised his oars by way of salute. But, in lowering them, one fell from his hand, tired with the unusual ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... out the clutch, but the engine was still running, though in a jerky, uncertain fashion, which indicated to the trained ear of the young inventor ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... out a bit of dried beef, the "jerky" of the southwest. He held it out arm's length, sending his horse racing forward with a sudden touch of his spur. The big dog barked eagerly and launched his sinewy body into the air; the sunlight flashed back a moment from the bared sharp teeth; Monarch dropped softly back to earth with the dried ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... perhaps five hundred yards from the Fort, a point of light had appeared. At first it was still, and then it took an odd jerky motion, to this side and to that, up and ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... characteristic habit of phrase making and became more jerky and real. "I respected you, Alice," he went on. "I didn't love you but I hoped I might, and I played the game. I liked to see you in my house. You fitted in and made it more of a home than that barrack had ever been. I began to collect prints and first editions, ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... he said in his jerky way. "Good employer—model to follow—great man. Watch him, mark him, imitate him—that's the way to get on. Can't go wrong," and he trotted down the street in search of fresh contributions ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... end had been brought, took a quick resolution. She hurried to the little town to seek her queen. The matter was not easy, for suspicion rested heavily upon her; but her determination removed all obstacles, and the queen, profoundly moved by Walpurga's jerky explanation and passionate appeal, and stirred to the very depths of her soul by Irma's heroism, demanded to be led at once to her. She was followed in a short while by the king, to whom the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... description above, when read together, have a somewhat broken or jerky effect. You may unite smoothly such as should be joined. The fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh can all be put into one. There is danger of making your sentences too long. Young writers find it difficult to make very long ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... inside a faery rath. The pipers were pipin' an' the Wee People was dancin', an' while they was dancin' they was singin' like this: 'Monday an' Tuesday—an' Monday an' Tuesday—an' Monday an' Tuesday'—an' it sounded all jerky and bad. 'That's a terrible poor song,' says the humpy, speakin' out plain. 'What's that?' says the faeries, stoppin' their dance an' gatherin' round him. ''Tis mortal poor music ye are making' says the ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... haven't got is meat," Bill told her, "except a little jerky; but there's plenty of that in the woods if we can just find it. And I don't intend to delay about that. If the snow gets much deeper, we'd have to have ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... and for a while discomfort set acutely in, for the movement of a howdah is short and jerky, and it takes some time both to adjust oneself to it and to lose the feeling that the elephant sooner or later—and probably sooner—must trip and fall. But the glory of the morning, the urgency of our progress, the novelty and sublimity of the means of transport, ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... curtain, the light; and, on the stage, the Roofers were glittering with gold and silver and their boyish voices came in gusts, punctuated by the jerky ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... taken off her suede gloves with a jerky movement and was abstractedly twisting them ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... about her want of good looks, and had never gone after those who were considered good-looking. In expressing this opinion she always first bent forward, then drew herself up to her full length, and finally gave a little jerky nod sideways, so as to clench the statement. Then Ivan's bright eye would twinkle more brightly than usual, and he would ask her how she knew that—reminding her that he was not always at home. This was Ivan's stereotyped mode of teasing his wife, and every time ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... their usual discrimination in the selection of the meal. In place of the light wine which Mr. Waddington generally chose, they had champagne. They drank Benedictine with their coffee and smoked cigars instead of cigarettes. Their conversation was a trifle jerky and Mr. Waddington kept on returning to the ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Raoul is grotesque. His movements are jerky, as if produced by imperfect machinery; his gait rejects all idea of order, and proceeds by spasmodic zig-zags and sudden stoppages, which knock him violently against peaceable citizens on the streets ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... with a little jerk over it—that was not all, however, for, as if desirous of dislocating his neck, he repeated the performance with a second handshake. This was extra politeness on his part—two handshakes, two jerky bows; all so ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... settled over the land, Eben left the boat and made his way slowly up the track. Reaching the main highway, he moved forward with a long jerky stride until he came to the little clearing where the Dobbins' shack was situated. He stopped and peered cautiously around. A light shone from the one window facing the road, and toward this Eben stealthily moved. There was no blind to the window, so when near enough he could ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... you got a hot-water bottle?' asked a sudden jerky voice, and he turned with a start to see ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... But then every one shouted across blocks, and besides, every one knew that Afternoon Tea Willie just dearly loved to be yelled at. He whirled about now, waved his hat, and came hurrying back, with the peculiar jerky irregular motion of his feet, that always marked ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... elevation the religious developement of the British mind becomes strangely jerky and irregular. The arrival of Sunday is suddenly revealed to the group round the breakfast-table by the severity with which the spinster's eye is fixed on an announcement over the stove that the ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... fitful—as wild as the breeze - It wandered about into several keys; It was jerky, spasmodic, and harsh, I'm aware; But still ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... next morning. The soiree was to be three days later. The music is nothing remarkable; in fact, the whole thing (it is called "The Prodigal Son") is not worthy of him. I have not met any of my fellow- performers yet. Forgive this jerky letter; I have been interrupted a thousand times. Charles thinks it is time to go back to Paris; but we have just received an invitation from Baron Alfred Rothschild to spend Ascot week—a sejour de sept jours—with a party at a house he has hired for the race-week ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... in order the books, magazines, flowers, and candy, with which Banneker had sought to fortify her against the tedium of the trip. As the time for departure drew near, they fell into and effortfully maintained that meaningless, banal, and jerky talk which is the inevitable concomitant of long partings between people who, really caring for each other, can find nothing but commonplaces wherewith to ease their stress of mind. Miss Van Arsdale's common sense ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Cochran began, but was interrupted by the loud entrance of little Casey. He tore into the room, breezy, voluble, greeting every one with short, jerky sentences. He reached the ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... glad that you came to see me." The afflicted man's voice was jerky and unmusical. ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... Cantonese, and Whiteside was able from time to time to interject a word, or correct some little slip on Tarling's part. The Chinaman listened without comment and when Tarling had finished he made one of his queer jerky bows and ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... presentation, on his way to offer marriage to Miss Nell Anthony, who has just been left motherless, and to whom he feels that he owes this manly tribute. He acquits his conscience of this duty, but performs it nevertheless in such a jerky, unlover-like fashion that few young women, certainly not one of Miss Anthony's force of character, could have been imposed upon. "I thought you l-loved me," said he. Which surely is not the way to win a fair lady. Much to his comfort, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... waved them away with that, and turned again, with his jerky suddenness, to his telegrams and letters. The colonel had not meant for Macdonald to pass out of the door through which he had entered. That was the military portal; the other one, opening into the hall from which Frances came, was the world's door for ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... impossible, Hamilton," I cried, when in short jerky sentences, as if afraid to give thought rein, he had answered my uncle's questioning. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... end of the arable tract, a young man of attractive appearance was driving a superb team: four yoke of young beasts, black-coated with tawny spots that gleamed like fire, with the short, curly heads that suggest the wild bull, the great, wild eyes, the abrupt movements, the nervous, jerky way of doing their work, which shows that the yoke and goad still irritate them and that they shiver with wrath as they yield to the domination newly imposed upon them. They were what are called oxen freshly yoked. The man who was guiding them had to clear a field ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... about machinery," admitted Russ. "It is something new to go on moving picture machines, to steady the film as it moves behind the lens. You've often noticed how jerky the pictures are at times?" ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... to—exactly." They first met, it seems, in saddle. The winter weather was glorious at Averill. They had a fine pack of hounds; coursing for jack-rabbit was their favorite sport, and, despite the fact that Foster had a beautiful and speedy horse, "his seat was so poor and his hand so jerky he never managed to get up ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... bands of Carlylites at Oxford and elsewhere might have been justified in describing the imperative duty of work as the theme of many an hour of strenuous idleness, and the superiority of golden silence over silver speech as the text of endless bursts of jerky rapture, while a too constant invective against cant had its usual effect of developing cant with a difference. To the incorrigibly sentimental all this was sheer poison, which continues tenaciously in the system. Others of robuster character no ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... exactly what they are going to do," said the pleasant-faced young man from Baltimore. "Now, then!" he added, with the air of one encouraging another, as the crew, laying hold of the tackle, and singing with a queer, jerky way, began to hoist. This would not avail. The nose of the boat was jammed deep into the sand, and so the cable was led back to a windlass, around which it was carried. Then, the windlass being worked ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... especially in the region of the flank, are seen to contract, then pause for a moment, then complete the act of contracting, thus making a double bellowslike movement at each expiration, a sort of jerky motion with every breath. The double expiratory movement may also be detected by allowing the that the expiratory current is not continuous, but is broken into two jets. When the animal is exerted a wheezing noise accompanies the breathing. This noise may be heard to a less extent when ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... humour, was capable of sinking into a theatrical mannerism and cockney vulgarities of wretched taste; Disraeli, with all his wit and savoir faire, has printed some rank fustian, and much slip-slop gossip; and George Meredith at times can be as jerky and mysterious as a prose Browning. Charlotte Bronte and Kingsley could both descend to blue fire and demoniac incoherences. Macaulay is brilliant and emphatic, but we weary at last of his everlasting ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... Roberts, "ye know nothin' of love, Mister Bobo, an' ye never will. I'm sorry for ye, too. Life without love is like eatin' bull-beef jerky without salsa!" ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... generally prefaced her remarks by an "Oh, dear!" ("That was one of her jerky ways," as Archie said.) "I could not help coming straight to you, for Archie would not talk, and I felt I must tell somebody. Oh, dear, Miss Middleton! What do you think? We have just called at the Friary—and——" ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... Supai or the stone pueblo of the Hopi. They gather the pinon nuts and grind them into meal. They crush the corn into meal, and thresh and winnow the beans, and dry the pumpkin for winter use. They cut the meat into strips and cure it into jerky. They dry the grapes and peaches. They garner the acorns and store them in huge baskets of their own weaving. They shear the sheep, and wash, dye, spin, and weave the wool into marvelous blankets. They cut the willows and gather sweet grasses for the making of ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... whisper, whisper of their voices had only emphasized the quiet. And, with every moment that went by, the lit-up tower had seemed more like a symbol to Dion. Then at last the cuckoo-clock had chimed and the wooden bird, with trembling tail, had made its jerky obeisance. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... tried to understand why Moglaut sat fascinated through endless sin-busting sermons and lachrymose requiems. To hurry afterwards, with the jerky motions, the glazed eyes of a zombie, to subsequent rendezvous with the soprano at his suburban apartment. It was entirely sufficient in Lonnie's philosophy ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... with a straggling beard and light blue eyes. He appeared competent enough, a bundle of nervous energy, and yet there was something about the fellow which instantly impressed me unfavorably—probably his short, jerky manner of speech, and his inability to ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... from that stolen reading of the opening verse in jerky, feverish, gouty manuscript, to the writer, let out his soul perhaps; for the poet's face struck fire too, and seeming to detect on a sudden the legible document of something by no means conventional below the young man's well-controlled manner and expression, he became as if ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... attempts to dry his shivering limbs; his clothes have fallen on the wet floor; he cannot force his blue toes into his oozy socks. At the moment he is attempting to wriggle himself into his trousers the horse is hitched-to again, and the jerky and jolty journey back up the beach begins. If the hair of a boy of ten could turn white in a single morning, there would be many a hoary-headed youngster in British watering-places. John Leech, in Punch, used to make pictures of the experiences I have outlined, and I studied them ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... Then in a harsh, jerky voice, without seeking his words, which, on the contrary, seemed to crowd through the portal of his brain, he dictated the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... traveled as only message-torps do travel. It hopped half a light-year in overdrive, and came back to normality long enough for its photocells to inspect the star-filled universe all about. Then it hopped another half light-year, and so on. For a long, long time it traveled in this jerky fashion. ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... with his head thrust forward to catch every word of the story which the other continued to pour out in nervous, jerky sentences and ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... Master paused in his jerky speech, stiffened as if in wild amazement at that which he beheld, and a sudden cry broke from ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... at St. Sylvester's, and Bertie ran up panting, waving his music. "Lucky I've not got to sing," said the young fellow in a jerky voice, and rushed to the vestry-door, where Mr. Clifton fidgeted, watch in hand. After such a race it was natural enough that the young organist should be somewhat flushed as he went up the aisle with a surpliced boy at his heels. But Judith had not hurried—had rather lingered, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... turned again they met Mr. James. He walked with queer, jerky steps, his arms bowed ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... old acquaintance, Vera Doukhova, with her large, frightened eyes, and the swollen vein on her forehead, in a grey jacket with short hair, and thinner and yellower than ever.. She had a newspaper spread out in front of her, and sat rolling cigarettes with a jerky movement of her hands. ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... abdominal pain, and therefore of colic, are restlessness, cessation of whatever the horse is about, lying down, looking around toward the flank, kicking with the hind feet upward and forward toward the belly, jerky switching of the tail, stretching as though to urinate, frequent change of position, and groaning. In the more intense forms the horse plunges about, throws himself, rolls, assumes unnatural positions, as sitting on the haunches, and grunts loudly. Usually the pain is not ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... He began a jerky, broken conversation that lasted until they reached the station, and left her puzzled at its drift and meaning. She quickened her pace, and so did he, talking at her slightly averted ear. She made lumpish and inadequate ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... one tense jerky burst, "Miss Mary it's only working under Miss Jane now would make me leave you so. I know how good you are and I work myself sick for you and for Mr. Edgar and for Miss Jane too, only Miss Jane she will want everything different ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... father to me one day—he called me Punch because in early life I had a squeaky voice and a jerky manner—"Punch, my boy, get into a habit of looking up, if you can, as you trot along through this world. If you keep your head down and your eyes on the ground, you'll see nothing of what's going on around you—consequently you'll know nothing; moreover, you'll get a bad habit of turning your eyes ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... this in jerky whispers, listening with one ear all the time to a sound which stirred Katherine, the voice which she had heard yesterday in the church at St. George's. The Englishman's spasmodic growl stopped, and she drifted a step nearer, listening. As she caught the words, her brows ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... word, she set out again at the same fierce, jerky gait, agitated by all the tumult raging in her heart. Her thoughts were expressed in her gestures. Her feet went astray, madness attacked her hands. At times her shadow, seen from behind, reminded one of a woman from La Salpetriere. ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... to happen!" exclaimed the Clown, as he brought his queer, jerky dance to an end. "If you'd rather, ...
— The Story of Calico Clown • Laura Lee Hope
... he said, speaking in a jerky voice so as not to interfere with the comfort of his pipe, "since I had a fowl for dinner— and I mind very well when it was. It was my wedding-day. Away up in the north it was, and parson ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... it, I can see a stone passage on the other side. Perhaps the old woman has locked this by accident. And perhaps they are not far off. I shake it. A deep, low savage growl follows this, and I hear within two inches of my toes, a series of jerky and inquisitive sniffs. The sniffs say, as it were, "There's no doubt about it, I know you're there;" the growl adds, "Show yourself, and ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... boy! You head that pony for camp mighty quick. Ride for it! You will have no difficulty in following my trail back. Don't drink much at a time. Take it in little sips," commanded the foreman in short, jerky sentences. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... a woman given to jerky conversations, interspersed with exclamation points. Her poise and balance had become a proverb in the business world. Yet her lips were trembling now. Her eyes were very round and bright. Her face had flushed, then grown white. Her voice shook a little. "Yes, of course I am. Only, I'm ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... far as he could into the water, and immersing the whole length of his arm besides. Hollingsworth at first sat motionless, with the hooked pole elevated in the air. But, by and by, with a nervous and jerky movement, he began to plunge it into the blackness that upbore us, setting his teeth, and making precisely such thrusts, methought, as if he were stabbing at a deadly enemy. I bent over the side of the boat. So obscure, however, so awfully mysterious, was that dark stream, ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... learning like her own. "I really dreaded to come—I go out so little, you know—but Jerry and the Colonel thought I ought, you know—and now I've really enjoyed it—and if Miss Marshall will come, Jerry and the Colonel will be quite satisfied. And so, of course, will I." With which rather jerky valedictory she finally got herself ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... not, or I should not have dreamed of asking you to help me to-night," Katherine said, with a nervous laugh; then in a jerky tone she went on: "I want you to get the store shut up as soon as possible, then, directly the people have cleared off, we have got to go and bring those stores home ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... of the "Sphinx" drew his hard, glittering, mineralogical flavour. The verse is not so much easy as facile. And not all the grace of internals can atone for external monotony. That trick—that full stop at the end of nearly every fourth line—it impairs the charm of the music and renders its flow jerky; coming, as it does, like an ever-repeated blow, it grows wearisome to the ear, and finally ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... abrupt in their actions, and their speech, in moments of hot discussion over the allotment of the choicer teeth, was truly a gabble. They spoke in monosyllables and short jerky sentences that was more a gibberish than a language. And yet, through it ran hints of grammatical construction, and appeared vestiges of the conjugation of some superior culture. Even the speech of Granser was so corrupt that were it put down ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... brain scream with the immensity of the sound. Luminous, white disks, three feet in diameter, glared at him, and the creature, which progressed with jerky leaps toward him, almost filled ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... arrangement of sticks of wood, tapering toward the top, and plastering it with clay. The top of the chimney was surrounded by a barrel with both ends open, through which the smoke climbed lazily up into the air. Near by stood an oak-tree, in which a jay-bird was screaming and dancing in a jerky way. Sukey then looked away into the blue sky, and the clouds seemed to become pagodas, and palm-trees, and golden ships floating drowsily away. All at once she heard somebody say, ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... Church music as good as you like, but lively at all costs, and the royal mind speedily wearying of all things in turn, he wished the numbers that made up an anthem to be short. So Purcell wasted his time and magnificent thematic material on mere strings of scrappy, jerky sections. The true Purcell touch is on them all, but no sooner has one entered fairly into the spirit of a passage than it is finished. Instrumental interludes—if, indeed, they can be called interludes, for they are as important as the vocal sections—abound, ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... past and ahead, and she saw its tail lights moving away with a pang of hopelessness. Then, before she realised what had happened, the big car ahead slowed and swung sideways, blocking the road, and the cab came to a jerky stop that flung her against the window. She saw two figures in the dim light of the taxi's head lamps, heard somebody speak, and the door ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... to verify this gallant affirmation in the case of my companion. She has put back her veil. Is she a young woman or an old girl? With these Englishwomen one never knows! Twenty-five years is apparently about her age, she has an Albionesque complexion, a jerky walk, a high dress like an equinoctial tide, no spectacles, although she has eyes of the intense blue which are generally short-sighted. While I bend my back as I bow, she honors me with a nod, which only brings into play the vertebrae of her ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... with their old nervous habit, and the answer came in an odd, jerky, half-connected way: "I dunnot know why it should ha' done. I mun be mad, or summat. I nivver had no hope nor nothin': theer nivver wur no reason why I should ha' had. Ay, I mun be wrong somehow, or it wouldna stick to me i' this road. I ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... across the heath, so bleak and wretched in December, was a daily delight now the sun was glinting over the sea and the gorse was in bud, and the stonechats, which had vanished during the cold weather, were back among the boulders, darting from stone to stone in short, jerky flight, with that sharp, jarring cry which is the prelude to their sweeter spring note. The moorland air at 8 a.m. was so fresh and pure and exhilarating that it seemed to blow away all the cobwebs, and Gwen often felt inclined to dance along the ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... till much later that owing to the thank-you-ma'am which they reached simultaneously with the word "suddenly" that when Mr. Logan got that note he thought it was "severely," and that the bad penmanship and generally disgraceful appearance of the loose-leaf sheet, the jerky hand, and the rather elderly envelope which was all Francis could find—it had been living in a pocket with many other things for some time—gave him a wrong idea. Mr. Logan, to anticipate a little, by this erroneous means, acquired an idea very near the truth. He thought that Marjorie ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... word he was saying, after those first jerky sentences. He stood looking past Bill at a drunken Irishman who was making erratic progress up the street; and he was no more conscious of the Irishman than he was of Bill's scorching condemnation of the town which could ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... of delivery, it should be remembered that the easiest movement is the best. A long, free sweep of the arm, aided by a swing of the body, will give more speed, be more deceiving to the batter, and allow of more work than any possible snap or jerky motion. Facing the striker before pitching, the arm should be swung well back and the body around so as almost to face second base in the act of delivery; this has an intimidating effect on weak-nerved batters; besides, not knowing from what point the ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... film must move continuously, in a somewhat jerky fashion, inside the dark light-tight camera, and behind the lens. As each picture, showing some particular motion, is taken, the film halts for the briefest space of time, and then goes on, to be wound up in the box, and a new portion ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... chance and without selection, he knocked violently at any house that he happened to pass. His blows, on which he was expending his last energies, were jerky and without aim; now ceasing altogether for a time, now renewed as if in irritation. It was the violence of his ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... loosened and fell in straggling wisps of gray to her shoulders. Her eyeglasses dropped from her nose and swayed dizzily on their slender chain. Her gloves split across the back and showed the white, tense knuckles. Her breath came in gasps, and only a moaning "whoa—whoa" fell in jerky rhythm from her white lips. Ashamed, frightened, and dismayed, Miss Prue clung to the reins and kept her straining eyes on the ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... three, sharp, jerky taps. Madge Steele quickened her pace along the path and the newcomers followed her. Other girls were pouring into the building nearest to the main structure of Briarwood. A broad stairway led up to assembly rooms; but out of the lower hall opened ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... his friend already seated, pouring out tea, and showing an unaffected interest in the choice of food. "I expect this to be a hard day for me," he said, with the curious jerky utterance which seemed to be his habit. "I sha'n't eat again till the evening, very likely. You guess ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... stood about in a hen-like manner for a time, and scratched a little and chirrawked meditatively, and then one pecked at and pecked over a hive of the doctor's bees, and after that they set off in a gawky, jerky, feathery, fitful sort of way across the fields towards Urshot, and Hickleybrow Street saw them no more. Near Urshot they really came upon commensurate food in a field of swedes; and pecked for a space with gusto, until their fame ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells |
