"Jerky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seemed standing on end, rushed ahead till the earth of the outer edge broke under the front tires and splashed in the water. Davies, now off, and again on the running board when needed, accompanied the car in its jerky and erratic progress, tossing robes and coats under the tires, calling instructions to Drexel similarly occupied on the other side, and warning Miss Drexel ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... imparted 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, ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... argument should not have an abrupt and jerky ending. It is not uncommon especially in class room debate, to hear a student at the close of his discussion say, "This is my proof; I leave the decision to the judges"; or "Thus you see I have established my proposition." ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... around him. One seared his thigh. Owing, however, either to sheer good fortune or to his jerky ascent, he reached the top of the ladder ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... the Eastern tobacco. I am a little nervous, and I find my hookah an invaluable sedative." He applied a taper to the great bowl, and the smoke bubbled merrily through the rose-water. We sat all three in a semicircle, with our heads advanced, and our chins upon our hands, while the strange, jerky little fellow, with his high, shining head, puffed uneasily in ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... head thrust forward to catch every word of the story which the other continued to pour out in nervous, jerky sentences and ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... moved into a new house, was asked to walk up stairs, and on complying saw an old woman preceding her up the staircase. Supposing her to be one of the servants, she took but little notice of her, though struck by the peculiarity of her gait, a sort of jerky limp, as though one leg was shorter than the other. In the course of conversation with her friend she mentioned the old woman, and asked if she was the housekeeper. "Housekeeper? no," said the lady: "we have no such person about our house. You must have been mistaken." The ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... drawn by a jerky-paced nag, with two men seated side by side shaking like jelly, and a woman behind, who clung to the side of the vehicle ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... said again, and this time words came, jerky and passionate, "this is my doing. I've driven you to it. If I hadn't interfered with Grange, you would never have ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... not always as close as this. In a longer story they could be more distinct and definite and yet preserve the unity of the work; but they should never disintegrate into minor climaxes,[37] nor into such a jerky succession of ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... 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 ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... resting on the back just at the base of the tail; the tail should be spread out like a fan and contain at least twenty-eight feathers. These feathers should be laced on the ends. The model fantail should have a nervous jerky motion and never be at rest. Each of these points is given a certain value on a scale of marking and in judging the birds they are marked just as you may be in your lessons at school. The fancier tries to breed a bird that comes the nearest to this model. ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... is here heaped up—for it is rather an unsifted accumulation than an artistic presentation and evolution—would have sufficed many a composer for several movements. The ideas are very unequal and their course very jerky till we come to the second subject (D major), which swells out into a broad stream of impassioned melody. Farther on the matter becomes again jerky and mosaic-like. While the close of the first ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... 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 with the posse. Take it easy—you especially, Pringle. Stella and me, they know where ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... attention of the reader. They adopt as their motto multum in parvo (much in little) and endeavor to pack a great deal in small space. Of course the extreme of brevity is to be avoided. Sentences can be too short, too jerky, too brittle to withstand the test of criticism. The long sentence has its place and a very important one. It is indispensable in argument and often is very necessary to description and also in introducing general ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... Carlylites at Oxford and elsewhere might have been justified in describing the imperative duty of work as the theme of many an hour of strenuous idleness, and the superiority of golden silence over silver speech as the text of endless bursts of jerky rapture, while a too constant invective against cant had its usual effect of developing cant with a difference. To the incorrigibly sentimental all this was sheer poison, which continues tenaciously in the system. ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... four Heavies besides the flagship, with twelve Mediums and twenty Lights. They slanted down in a jerky evasive course while pictures flashed on screens to be ...
— Tulan • Carroll Mather Capps
... swaying a little, her hands still tightly clenched, breathing through half parted lips in short, quick, jerky inhalations like ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... or correcting, judgment of Mr. E. DROOD, I make bold to guess that the modern true lover's mind, such as it is, is rendered jerky by contemplation of the lady who has made him the object of her virgin affectations," proceeded Mr. DIBBLE, looking intently at EDWIN, but still making farther and farther reaches toward the distant crackers, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... child could 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
... question to Hannah about her sorrow; but she read in the sombre, hopeless eyes of the sufferer that the burden must be borne alone; so she left Frau von Gropphusen in peace. She listened patiently when the nervous woman talked ceaselessly about a thousand different things, in short, jerky sentences as if to drown some inner voice; neither would Klaere interrupt with a single question the heavy silence in which, at other times, Hannah would sit for hours, watching her as she busied herself with her little housewifely tidyings and mendings. It was only in watching ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... a loss, had already climbed upon a low projection in the wall of one of the houses opposite. From this point of vantage he could more easily observe what went on inside the cabaret, and in short, jerky sentences he gave a description of what he saw to ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... if he can, by throwing doubts before these same tenants whether they should pay or not before Moll's succession is made sure. And I have good reason to fear they will not, for I observed yesterday when I called upon Farmer Giles to invite him to our feast, he seemed very jerky and ill at ease, which perplexed me greatly, until, on quitting, I perceived through a door that stood ajar old Simon seated in a side room. And 'tis but natural that if they find prudent excuse for withholding their rents they will keep their money ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... his gun Bellamy caught his wrist. They struggled for an instant, the one to free his arm, the other to retain his grip. Bellamy spurred his horse closer. The more powerful of the two, he slowly twisted around the imprisoned wrist. Inch by inch the revolver swung in a jerky, spasmodic circle. There was a moment when it pointed directly at the mine owner's heart. His enemy's finger crooked on the trigger, eyes passionate with the stark lust to kill. But the pressure on the wrist had numbed ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... 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 ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... reading good literature. In the former case the language is apt to be full and harmonious, and sprinkled over with gay flowers of maxim and illustration, whereas in the latter the style of the performance is apt to be bald and jerky.[35] ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... people held social dances, the women, dressed in their best gowns, ranged on one side, the men on the other; all sung, and three or four drummers furnished an accompaniment; the music was lively if somewhat jerky. At intervals the people rose and danced, the "step" being a bending of the knees and swinging of the body, the women holding their arms and hands in various ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... of facilities for the expeditious disposal of money that had been earned at great hazard, and not infrequently by the sweat of anguish. One chilly November morning a sailor was walking down the Highway. His step was jerky and uncertain, for his feet were bare; his sole articles of dress consisted of a cotton shirt and a pair of trousers that seemed large enough to take another person inside of them. These were kept from dropping off by what is known as a soul-and-body lashing—that ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... adventurers left behind. This was the tenor of the message, but there was something about it that worried Frank. Lathrop, he knew, was an expert wireless operator, but the sending that he performed that morning was so jerky and irregular that the rankest amateur might ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... a new, strange, jerky fluttering of wings far softer than the grouse's, and George and Jane cried out together: "Oh, do mind your wings in ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... his words. Certainly yes, when the feeling of the speaker behind the phrase makes him enforce his meaning by a suitable movement. In speaking today fewer gestures are indulged in than years ago. There should never be many. Senseless, jerky, agitated pokings and twitchings should be eradicated completely. Insincere flourishes should be inhibited. Beginners should beware of gestures until they become such practised masters of their minds and bodies that physical emphasis may be ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... going to treat you and Ward white," said Stockton. "You'll have good grub. Herky-Jerky's the best cook this side of Holston, and you'll be left untied in the daytime. But if either of you attempts to get away it means a leg shot off. Do ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... the quality of the human mind, with its every-day, jerky reasoning powers and its submerged, smooth intuitions, finds its strongest support ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... 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 ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... Parmalee's talk, which was thrown at me in jerky, desultory sentences, and interested me not at all. I went on with my work of investigation, and though I did not get down on my knees and examine every square inch of the carpet with a lens, yet I thoroughly examined all of the contents of the room. I regret to say, ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... other. And Michael, spilling over with unused vitality from the cramped space of the Eugenie's deck, scampered down the beach in a hurly-burly of joy, scenting a thousand intimate land-scents as he ran, and describing a jerky and eccentric course as he made short dashes and good-natured snaps at the coconut crabs that scuttled across his path to the safety of the water or reared up and menaced him with formidable claws and a spluttering and foaming of the shell-lids of ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... the peopleless city of Belgrade and waited for his captors. They came then, timidly reassured by his non-violence. While he talked to them pleasantly the citizens of London and Paris suddenly began to dance jerky and grotesque jigs on the pavements of their cities. In the same moment the Chief Justice of the Court of the Nations, at a cocktail party in Washington, writhed in the exquisite pain of total muscle cramp, his august features twisted into a ...
— The Mightiest Man • Patrick Fahy
... a jerky movement, as if pulling himself together. He put an unsteady hand into his breast-pocket. "It came this afternoon, my lady, about an hour ago. I am afraid it's bad news—very bad news. Yes, my lady, I'm telling you, I'm telling ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... scene of confusion followed. Stepan Trofimovitch uttered some exclamation in French, clasping his hands, but Varvara Petrovna had no thought for him. Even Mavriky Nikolaevitch muttered some rapid, jerky comment. But Pyotr Stepanovitch was the most excited of all. He was trying desperately with bold gesticulations to persuade Varvara Petrovna of something, but it was a long time before I could make out what it was. He appealed to Praskovya Ivanovna, and Lizaveta Nikolaevna ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... doll. The boy looked very handsome, in a black velvet suit with lace ruffles at the wrists and knees, and long white stockings with black slippers. He was clever, too, in assuming the character, and walked with stiff, jerky strides, like a mechanical doll that ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... down in two minutes, Syd, I'm off," said I, pulling out my watch, and nervously noting the jerky springs of the spidery second-hand that seemed to be in a much greater ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... to be done. They couldn't go on like this.... Her mind went to and fro, quickly, with short jerky movements, distressed; it had to do so much thinking in ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... Fike, and for beggars. Yet it was Miss Magen whose faith in the purpose of the struggling world inspired Una. Una walked with her up Madison Avenue, past huge old brownstone mansions, and she was unconscious of suiting her own quick step to Miss Magen's jerky lameness as the Jewess talked of her ideals of a business world which should have generosity and chivalry and the accuracy of a biological laboratory; in which there would be no need of charity to employee.... ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... looked quickly at her father, and saw that his face had undergone a remarkable change. He was sitting motionless, clutching his cigar between the fingers of his right hand. Presently, his lips moved and he spoke in short, jerky sentences. ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... and disorderly in the crowd; he kept trying to dance and falling down. There was a ring round him. Raskolnikov squeezed his way through the crowd, stared for some minutes at the drunken man and suddenly gave a short jerky laugh. A minute later he had forgotten him and did not see him, though he still stared. He moved away at last, not remembering where he was; but when he got into the middle of the square an emotion suddenly came over him, overwhelming him ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... instinctively angry with him: his vague features, his weak, wandering eyes, peering from behind large glasses, his tow-coloured hair that seemed to have "washed-out," and above all, his squeaky voice that piped on one jerky note.... ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... gathering cat-tails in the river marshes an alert, nervous little brown bird rises startled from the rushes and tries to elude you as with short, jerky flight it goes deeper and deeper into the marsh, where even the rubber boot may not follow. It closely resembles two other birds found in such a place, the swamp sparrow and the short-billed marsh wren; but you may know by its ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... face grew plainer, it almost gave him the air of being unnerved; and he said quickly, in a jerky voice: "Yes, and I know his way of acting too. During the last ten years I have learnt to unravel his intrigues—to understand and anticipate his manoeuvres.... Oh, his is a clever system! ... Instead of lying low, as you'd expect, he attacks his opponent ... ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... men of esprit who are excessively exhausting to some people. They are the talkers who have what may be called JERKY minds. Their thoughts do not run in the natural order of sequence. They say bright things on all possible subjects, but their zigzags rack you to death. After a jolting half-hour with one of these jerky companions, talking with a dull friend affords great relief. It is like taking the cat in your ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... say that I have been talking with Aunt Mary, and about you," I continued in a grieved tone, for I do not like jerky responses, "I wish you to understand that it was in connection with no ordinary topic. Phyllis,"—I spoke with the utmost tenderness—"can you not guess the nature ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... one deep gulping sigh of relief, flashed across the room on tiptoe, and went down on his knees beside the monstrous thing, moving the candle this way and that along the length of it, as if searching for something, and laughing in little jerky gasps of relief when he found nothing that was not as it had been—as it should be—as he wanted it to be. And then, as he rose and patted the clay, and laughed aloud as he realized how hard it had set, then, at that instant, a white shape lurched forward and swooped ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... very dream-like and strange: the awful, overwhelming, crushing sound of the wind seemed to press upon my brain so that I could not for a long time think, only lie and try to breathe without catching each inspiration in a jerky, spasmodic way. ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... against your ad. in the Silver City Times [the communication began]. If you haven't found your man yet, maybe I can put you onto the right lead. I'm driving a jerky on the road from Mountain Home to Oriana, but me and the old man we don't jibe any too well. I've got a sort of disgust on me. Think I'll quit soon and go to mining. Jimmy Breen he runs the Ferry, he can tell you all I know. Fifty miles from Mountain Home good road can make ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... What was the matter with her? What made her throw out these jerky sentences with this short, ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... letter came. You read blunt, jerky sentences that told you Mark had died suddenly, in the mess room, of heart failure. Captain Symonds said he thought you would want to know exactly how it happened.... "Well, we were 'cock-fighting,' if you know what that is, after dinner. ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... I rolled up my stuff, loaded up Starlight, an' said good-bye to little Barbie. That was the hard part of it. She didn't cry when I told her I was goin'—that would 'a' been too girlish-like for her; she just breathed hard an' jerky for a couple o' minutes while we looked in opposite directions, an' then she said, "How'll you come back next time, Happy? It's over three years ago since you left that other time, an' you came back just as you said, ridin' on a black hoss with ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... neck. They began a fast swaying walk, in which Swann appeared to be forcing the girl over backwards. They swayed, and turned, and glided; they made strange abrupt movements in accordance with the jerky tune; they halted at the end of a walk to make little steps forward and back; then they began to bounce and sway together in a motion that Lane instantly recognized as a toddle. Lane remembered the one-step, the fox-trot and other new ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... coming through," replied the other without moving, "but in the same jerky fashion. Every time I get it, it seems to have gone back to ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... platform chiefly concerns itself with the grievances of its own particular supporters, while a crowd of sightseers circulates, enjoying the oratory with a desultory impartiality. The usual silhouettes of gesticulating speakers appear like jerky clockwork figures above the throng. A crowd of Socialists are "remembering Chicago" in a corner. The chief centre of attraction is a drag occupied by a Philanthropic Young-lady Chairwoman, her chaperon, some leading laundresses, one or two male sympathisers, and a couple of reporters. The Chairwoman ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various
... leech, a man of middle height, whose shrewd and well-formed head, bald but for a little hair at the sides, was set on a somewhat ungainly body. His sharp eyes looked hither and thither, and there was something jerky in his quick movements; still, their grave decisiveness made up for the lack of grace. He paid no heed to the bystanders, but threw himself forward rather than bent over the patient, felt him, and with a light hand renewed his bandages; and then he looked round the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a jerky motion and downed the contents; the chaser stood disregarded before him and O'Brien regarded his patron with an ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... 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, in ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... 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 ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... who had led in Form I and now stood sideways on, so as to keep his charge under constant survey. Even in that moment of acute despair he arrested Robert's attention. There was something odd about him—something distressful and indignant. Whilst he prayed he made jerky, irritable movements which fluttered out the wings of his gown, so that with his sleek black hair and pointed face he looked like a large angry blackbird, trapped ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... ask if she was about the house," Henley made reply, in a jerky sort of fashion. "There is a little matter I wanted ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... only flourished the napkin-ring, and humorously taunted him with not having packed everything, after all. The stage drove on, but for the next mile his breathing was jerky. ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... with their old nervous habit, and the answer came in an odd, jerky, half-connected way: "I dunnot know why it should ha' done. I mun be mad, or summat. I nivver had no hope nor nothin': theer nivver wur no reason why I should ha' had. Ay, I mun be wrong somehow, or it wouldna stick to me i' this road. I conna get rid on it, an' I ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... haven't got is meat," Bill told her, "except a little jerky; but there's plenty of that in the woods if we can just find it. And I don't intend to delay about that. If the snow gets much deeper, we'd have to have snowshoes ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... supported by a subsidy from its own writers. Men whose writing commands high payment will contribute to the Free Press sometimes for small fees, usually for nothing; but, at any rate, always well below their market prices. But contribution of that kind is always precarious, and, if I may use the word, jerky. Meanwhile, it does not fill a paper. It is true that the level of writing in the Free Press is very much higher than in the Official Press. To compare the Notes in "The New Age," for instance, with the Notes in the "Spectator" is to discern a contrast like that between one's chosen ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... Linnet shot two days ago. I next place in the cage a bluebottle, one only, to avoid confusion. Her fat belly proclaims the advent of a laying time. An hour later, when the excitement of being put in prison is allayed, my captive is in labor. With eager, jerky steps, she explores the morsel of game, goes from the head to the tail, returns from the tail to the head, repeats the action several times and at last settles near an eye, a dimmed eye ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... never complained about her want of good looks, and had never gone after those who were considered good-looking. In expressing this opinion she always first bent forward, then drew herself up to her full length, and finally gave a little jerky nod sideways, so as to clench the statement. Then Ivan's bright eye would twinkle more brightly than usual, and he would ask her how she knew that—reminding her that he was not always at home. This was Ivan's stereotyped mode of teasing his wife, and every time he employed it he was called ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... face and melancholy dark eyes. I am supposed to look like him, I believe. He, too, spoke to me that evening about Rosalind's engagement. I remember how he walked up and down the dining-room, with his hands behind him and his head bent forward, and his quick, nervous, jerky movements. ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... jerky little voice in answer, "your aunts, remember, were all young once, and considered great beauties in their day." There was a world of gentle pride in Aunt Matilda's voice as she said this, and it sounded so well that she said it over again. "Great beauties in their day! In consequence they all ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... off her suede gloves with a jerky movement and was abstractedly twisting them between ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... course, both in appearance and in guilt, was the formidable Boss. Harraway, the secretary, was a lean, bitter man with a long, scraggy neck and nervous, jerky limbs, a man of incorruptible fidelity where the finances of the order were concerned, and with no notion of justice or honesty to anyone beyond. The treasurer, Carter, was a middle-aged man, with an impassive, rather sulky expression, and a yellow parchment skin. He was a capable organizer, ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... painfully over the stony ground, with frequent jerky halts to preserve order and to pick up the wounded. Little puffs of white smoke dot the distant sandhills. Here and there a gaudy flag waves defiantly. In front the green tops of the palm-trees by the Nile tantalise ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... feel pretty big. I guess he's not very light, or very dark, but I think he'll be tall and SOME stout. Don't you know how the lawyer that lives on our street looks? Just as if he owned all the houses on the avenue. I think he'll give us a teenty little bow like this," and she gave a jerky little nod, "but I think he'll be quite nice to us after ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... vengeance. The three apprentices promptly obeyed the command given to them, and were ushered into the presence of their infuriated captain. They were each handsome, broad-shouldered athletes, with keen, sparkling, fearless eyes that indicated fearlessness. He made a short, jerky, almost inarticulate speech on the wickedness and indecency of committing an act of gross disrespect to the vessel, the owner and himself, all of whom should have ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... healthful one, though it is not always graceful, since their long strides commonly give the prominent buttocks a jerky movement. They prove the naturalness of that style of walking which, in profile, shows the chest thrust forward and the buttocks backward; the abdomen is in, and the shoulders do not swing as the strides ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... what can I do for you?" he said. He spoke in a jerky voice, as if he thought to ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... startled on observing in the wall, in one corner, just under the ceiling, a tiny door fly open, and emerging thence a grotesque, miniature man, holding, uplifted in his hand, a hammer of size proportionate to his own figure. Mr. Norton sat motionless, while this small specimen proceeded, with a jerky gait and many bobbing grimaces, across a wire stretched to the opposite corner of the room, where stood a tall, ebony clock. When within a short distance of the clock another tiny door in its side flew ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... at Herr von Aurnhammer's after dinner nearly every day. The young woman is a fright, but she plays ravishingly, though she lacks the true singing style in the cantabile; she is too jerky." ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... and began to walk up and down the whole length of the platform. Therese watched the jerky movements of the hands of the clock, and smiled at ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... their moments of depression. R. Jones' face clouded, and jerky remarks about hardness of times and losses on the Stock Exchange began to proceed from him. As Scotland Yard had discovered, he lent money on occasion; but he did not lend it to youths in Freddie's ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Chauvin got two more bucks, several tree squirrels and some mountain quail. We made plenty of jerky, while living off the ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... feel giddy and tend to fall, usually towards the side opposite to that on which the abscess is situated. The head and neck are retracted, the pulse is slow and weak, and the temperature subnormal. There is frequent yawning, and the speech is slow, syllabic, and jerky. There may be optic neuritis and blindness. There is sometimes unilateral or even bilateral spastic paralysis of the limbs from pressure on the medulla oblongata. The respiration may assume the Cheyne-Stokes character, occasionally ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... actually only about fifty-five, had the air of one born in the grandfather class. Lockyer the son dyed his hair and affected jauntiness, but was in fact not many years younger than Benchley and had the stiffening jerky legs of one paying for a lively youth. Norman was thirty-seven—at the age the Greeks extolled as divine because it means all the best of youth combined with all the best of manhood. Some people thought Norman younger, almost boyish. Those knew him uptown only, where he hid the man ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... hand movements. This grace in baton-manipulation need not interfere in any way with the definiteness or precision of the beat. In fact an easy, graceful beat usually results in a firmer rhythmic response than a jerky, awkward one. For the first beat of the measure the entire arm (upper as well as lower) moves vigorously downward, but for the remaining beats the movement is mostly confined to the elbow and wrist. In the case of a divided ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... was an old-fashioned affair that wound up noisily with a big key. It played several jerky little waltzes and four plaintive old songs: "Ben Bolt," "The Last Rose of Summer," "Then You'll Remember Me," and "Home, Sweet Home." The children had sung them so often that they knew all the words, and their voices rang out lustily at first; but, about ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... sharp, jerky outbursts, and it seemed to me that to speak at all was very painful to him, and that his will all through was overriding ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... this class of property; but in Paris the law is a dead letter, and, although it is now active in the provinces and in places like Marseilles, Lyons, Bordeaux, and Nantes, it is applied, even there, in a jerky and intermittent manner. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... morning disappearing through the front gates at about eleven o'clock; very shiny top hat; very tight tail coat; very tight grey trousers; very tight yellow gloves; very tight grey-yellow moustache; very tight pasty face; curiously constricted, jerky gait as though his boots, too, were very tight. Precisely the sort of chronic, half-tipsy hanger-on one used to see in billiard rooms or eating cloves in West End bars. By association of ideas with the orientalism of Sultana he was called ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... Roosevelt made many friends while serving as a Captain with the Motor Machine-Gun Corps in Mesopotamia, and here he reveals himself as a keen soldier and a pleasant companion. In style he is perhaps a shade too jerky; his frequent failure to make his connections gives one a sense of being in the hands of a rather rambling guide. But the important points are that he is an engaging rambler, and that he can describe his experiences both of war and peace with so clear a simplicity that they ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... notion why she was lingering there alone, when she had come out for the sole purpose of not being alone; but the will to do anything else had suddenly forsaken her. Her mind, however, had become curiously active all at once, in a jerky, disconnected sort ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... sparely built, muscular man, of medium size, quick and jerky in his movements, and springy in his gait. His face is broad and tanned, his cheek bones high, and his nose a snub. His beard is short and thin and grizzled, and his gray hair, curling at the ends, hangs around his neck. His shoulders are sloping, his chest deep but not ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... like a cat, or she'll get away from you. When she fights strong and the tiller slips a little, in a jerky, greasy sort of way, let up on her a trifle; it is the way she tells you at night that the water is too shoal; but keep edging her up, little by little, toward the point. You are well up on the bar, now; there is a bar under every point, because the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... General Tenby, and about twenty minutes past the hour wheels rattled on the gravel of the short carriage-drive, and the General drove up to the door. He was a tall, soldierly-looking man of between fifty and sixty, with a red face and a keen blue eye, and a precise, jerky manner. ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... 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
... very restless hands. His whole nature hung on wires, as if—which was indeed the case—his mental capacity was too big and overpowering for his physical strength. His manners under the strain of work were jerky and abrupt, but otherwise he was a very kindly and genial man. To Joan he was excessively polite, and so afraid that her capabilities might not come up to his expectations that for the first few days he left her practically with no work to do. She sat in a large, well-lit—if ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... quick, jerky movement of the head, which set in motion the little rings of hair, now growing so fast, and brought his brother ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... ma'am," Mr. Barrow answered with jerky brusqueness. "Died of jungle fever and business troubles combined. The jungle fever might not have killed him if he had not been driven mad by the business troubles, and the business troubles might not have put ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sallow and tired; but the dark eyes were full of fun and kindness. Presently, he rose and began to walk up and down the room with a curious, prancing walk, rolling himself a cigarette, and talking away in a rapid, jerky fashion with his continual, "eh, eh?" coming ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... mind of the spectator is prepared for almost anything that he may find to be going on in that room when he sees it again. But too much care cannot be taken to guard against everything that may make for jerky or illogical action of this kind. The merciless scissors of a careless operator in the picture theatre may remove three or four inches of the film at a certain point, with the result that a character leaving one side of the room and starting ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... an effort; I heard nothing except "I think you should consult me," but our quick children's eyes apprehended the meaning of the scene. Krak was being bearded. There was no doubt of it; for presently Krak bowed her head in a jerky unwilling nod and walked out of the room. My mother stood still for a moment with a vivid red colour in her cheeks. Then she walked across to Victoria, lifted one of her hands from ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... absorbed in my book, I would have a vague consciousness of the connection between the various singsongs and their respective performers. I would be aware that the bass voice with the flourishes in front of me belonged to the stuttering widower from Vitebsk, that the squeaky, jerky intonation to the right came from the red-headed fellow whom I loathed for his thick lips, or that the sweet, unassertive cadences that came floating from the east wall were being uttered by Reb Rachmiel, the "man of ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... chap—badly hipped." . . . The rain pattered and swished in the garden; a water-pipe (it must have had a hole in it) performed just outside the window a parody of blubbering woe with funny sobs and gurgling lamentations, interrupted by jerky spasms of silence. . . . "A bit of shelter," he mumbled ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... sounded curiously weak and strange to her own ears—like that of some one else speaking. She wondered if she had really spoken audibly, and, in a sudden terror lest he shouldn't have heard her, she repeated the words with jerky emphasis. ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... Christians. Against the purple background of the hangings of the baldacchino, between the wing-like drapery on either side, enclosing, as it were, a brasier of glory, he assumed real majesty of aspect. He was no longer the feeble old man with the slow, jerky walk and the slender, scraggy neck of a poor ailing bird. The simious ugliness of his face, the largeness of his nose, the long slit of his mouth, the hugeness of his ears, the conflicting jumble ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... unconscious manner in which he uttered his notes between two mouthfuls, never mounting a twig or making a "performance" of his music. I have watched one an hour at a time, going about in his jerky fashion, tearing up the ground and searching therein, exactly after the manner of a scratching hen. This, by the way, was a droll operation, done with both feet together, a jump forward and a jerk back of the whole body, so rapidly one ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... brushed up into that approved tonsorial ornament known in barrack-room parlance as a "quiff." His complexion was of that peculiar olive-brown shade especially noticeable in most Anglo-Indians. In his smart, soldierly aspect, biting, jerky Cockney speech and clipped, wax-pointed moustache he betrayed ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... of young Watson at all. But all of a sudden it became apparent that that young man meant business. He changed his front, so to speak, in a very unexpected manner, and just as we were beginning to exult over our man's certain victory, he lay over on his side, and, with a peculiar, jerky side-stroke, began to work his little carcase through the water ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... movement forward, muscular tremors affect the limbs; each step is short, jerky, and convulsive; the respirations and pulse are almost immediately greatly quickened, and the lower lip is hung pendulous, and moved almost unconsciously up and down with a flapping noise against the upper. A patchy perspiration breaks out about the body and quarters, ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... had been forced to run for his train. He had begun to find out one could not do that kind of thing. Mrs. Cartwright sat opposite, knitting quietly, and her smooth, rhythmic movements were soothing. Clara was never abrupt and jerky. ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... down it the horse, urged by his rider, sprang in dizzy leaps; where the footing was worst Laramie tried to ease his frantic plunges. Stricken with terror, the beast caught his breath in convulsive starts and breathed in grunting snorts. Halting and bucking in jerky recoveries; leaping from foothold to foothold as if every jump were his last, and taking on a momentum far beyond his own or his rider's control, the frightened pony dashed recklessly ahead. It was as if a great weight, bounding on living springs, were heading to bolt at length against ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... head had ceased. There was a dark stain down either cheek, but it was drying there, and as Lannes had foreseen, his hair and the cap had acted as a bandage, at last checking the flow effectively. His breathing was heavy and jerky, but John believed that he would revive before long. It was not possible that one so vital as Lannes, so eager for great action, ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... went around with a frown on her face, and with a nervous, jerky manner, all the while talking of the terrible amount of hard work there was to do, and grumbling that she had never seen such a dirty house in all her life. But down in her heart she enjoyed it, for she liked ...
— Zip, the Adventures of a Frisky Fox Terrier • Frances Trego Montgomery
... instant what had been a gliding flight of the automobile became, suddenly, a more or less uneven and jerky progress, accompanied by violent explosions. At the first of these Honora, in alarm, leaped to her feet. And the machine, after what seemed an heroic attempt to continue, came to a dead stop. They were on the outskirts of a village; ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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 paternally ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... followed by Ayrault, who was not much ahead of Cortlandt, for, notwithstanding his fifty years, the professor was very spry. The tortoise was almost the exact counterpart of the Glyptodon asper that formerly existed on earth, and shambled along at a jerky gait, about half as fast again as they could walk, and while it continued to go in their direction they were greatly pleased. They soon found that by dropping the butts of their rifles sharply and simultaneously on either side, just back of the head, they could direct their course, by making their ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... 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
... we got interested. Tusky kep' the fire goin' and I rustled greasewood. We cooked her three days and three nights. At the end of that time she was sort of pale and frazzled, but still givin' points to three-year-old jerky on cohesion and other uncompromisin' forces of Nature. We buried her then, and went ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... was a thin, querulous, and withered-looking little man, who twitched his eyebrows as he spoke, and spoke in short, jerky phrases. ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... whom the slave ushered in a few minutes later was old, spare and bent, but he was alert and restless. His eyes were brilliant and over them arched eyebrows that were almost white. He made a jerky obeisance. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... garment or round the full front above the tight waistband, as fancy took him, and enjoying the warmth of his master's body. It was very interesting and amusing to see him poke his little head out between the buttons, or through a buttonhole of the blouse at intervals to ask, with glittering eye and jerky movement, for an occasional fly from his master's hand caught on the shafts ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... being recognized after a few days as a psychosis, she was sent to the Observation Pavilion, where she was described as jumping about in bed in a jerky, purposeless manner, resistive when anything was done for her, and mute. Her sister reported that when she visited her the patient said "Go away, I ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... 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 ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... Bobbie got up on the platform and after he had made a funny, jerky, fat, little bow, all of a sudden every word of that poem seemed to slip from his mind! He stood there, looking around the room, now up at the ceiling and now down at the floor. His face grew red, and he began pulling at the ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Keeping Store • Laura Lee Hope
... with a straggling beard and light blue eyes. He appeared competent enough, a bundle of nervous energy, and yet there was something about the fellow which instantly impressed me unfavorably—probably his short, jerky manner of speech, and his inability to look straight ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... short the Cerebral takes short steps. Because he lacks muscle he lacks a powerful stride. As a result he has a walk that is irregular and sometimes jerky. ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... Fly Catcher (Muscicapa Grisola) is fairly common on our lawns, where it will sit quietly on a garden seat, or roller, and thence take its short jerky flight after the flies. I have known it to nest year after year, at the Vicarage, in a hole in the wall, where ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... a good upstanding piece, John,' replied the old man sharply in his thin jerky voice, which curiously contrasted with his still powerful frame. 'You take un in there and try un'—pointing to a piece where the crop had been beaten down by a storm, and where the reapers were at work. 'You had better put the rattletrap thing away, John, and go in and help they. Never wasted ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... Gallery of the House of Commons, or the more privileged seats "under the Gallery," from my days of knickerbockers, I often heard Palmerston speak. I remember his abrupt, jerky, rather "bow-wow"-like style, full of "hums" and "hahs"; and the sort of good-tempered but unyielding banter with which he fobbed off an inconvenient enquiry, or repressed the simple-minded ardour of a ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... executed kinsmen had been punished with death. Don Jose Avellanos was perhaps the only one living who knew the whole story of those unspeakable cruelties. He had suffered from them himself, and he, with a shrug of the shoulders and a nervous, jerky gesture of the arm, was wont to put away from him, as it were, every allusion to it. But whatever the reason, Dr. Monygham, a personage in the administration of the Gould Concession, treated with reverent awe by the miners, and indulged ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... still raged furiously and I was in desperately low spirits. I had been able to eat nothing during the preceding day. I lay there half asleep, half awake, for, I suppose, a long time, hearing the window rattle sometimes when the cannon was noisy and feeling under the jerky reflections on the wall as though I were in an old shambling cab driving along a dark road, I thought a good deal about that talk with Semyonov that I had. What a strange man! But then I do not understand him at all. ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... Hans pursued the jerky tenour of his way for an hour or so, till he came in sight ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... been failing in health of late; his old pains were on him again, and, as well as his hind leg, had seized his right shoulder, where were still lodged two rifle-balls. He was feeling very ill, and crippled with pain. He came up the familiar bank at a jerky limp, and there caught the odor of the foe; then he saw the track in the mud—his eyes said the track of a small Bear, but his eyes were dim now, and his nose, his unerring nose, said, "This is the track of the huge ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... front of him. So close was the pack that the motion resembled the writhing of some prehistoric monster rather than the movements of individual human beings. In that half-light tossing arms and legs looked like tentacles flung out in agony by the mammoth reptile. Its progress was jerky and convulsive, sometimes tortuous, but it traveled slowly toward the rail as if by the impulsion of an ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... than either Sebastian's or Hilda's had been. She had taken a big dose, so as to secure immobility. The question now was, would she recover at all from it? Hour after hour we waited and watched; and not a sign of movement! Only the same deep, slow, hampered breathing, the same feeble, jerky pulse, the same deathly pallor on the dark cheeks, the same corpse-like ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... vehemence of change and energy; the constant repetition or reiteration of interjections and ejaculations which are evidently supposed to give an air of passionate realism and tragic nature to the jingling and jerky dialogue; many little mannerisms too trivial to specify and too obvious to mistake; the occasional spirit and beauty, the frequent crudity and harshness, of the impetuous and uncertain style; the faults no less than the merits, the merits as ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the query before John Ward stalked through the fort door and stood at Dale's elbow. Speaking slowly and stressing his words in that jerky fashion that marks an Indian's speech ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... description of the man in sharp, jerky sentences, each one definite and pointed. She spoke with the certainty of conviction. ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... he saw them more clearly. Now, though, they had a bluish light, were like moons, moons that burnt. If he lit the lamp and tried to read, they got between him and the book, and danced up and down the pages, with jerky, clockwork movements, like stage fireflies. He put the light out, and lay staring vacantly at the pale square of the window. And then, just when he was least expecting it, he saw the whole face, so close to him and so distinctly, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... 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
... she put Baby Newcomb back into his basket. As she did so, a ripple of shrill, jerky laughter crackled through the room. Lorry put her hands to her ears. "You know I can't say anything. You'd keep ...
— I'll Kill You Tomorrow • Helen Huber
... the energy he could into a series of short jerky strokes, using the muscles of his arms, failing altogether to get the weight of his body on the oar. At the end of twenty minutes Priscilla ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... and abrupt in their actions, and their speech, in moments of hot discussion over the allotment of the choicer teeth, was truly a gabble. They spoke in monosyllables and short jerky sentences that was more a gibberish than a language. And yet, through it ran hints of grammatical construction, and appeared vestiges of the conjugation of some superior culture. Even the speech of Granser was so corrupt that were ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London |
