"Jerky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... swaying a little, her hands still tightly clenched, breathing through half parted lips in short, quick, jerky inhalations ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... down the path with long strides, her garments blowing back. At three paces from the sleigh she halted and called to him in a voice so clear and unrestrained that Raven thought Tenney, coming on with his jerky action, ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... just taken off her suede gloves with a jerky movement and was abstractedly twisting them ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... fast—very fast!" panted Bunny, in a sort of jerky way, for the cart rattled over some bumps just then, and if Bunny had not been careful how he spoke he might have bitten his tongue ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Aunt Lu's City Home • Laura Lee Hope
... that he would not have remained alone for a moment. There was a man drunk 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
... 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
... of pride upon her throat. There was no dribble of emotion. Only the facts popped out—hard and dry, and to Miss Ram intensely illuminative. Mary did not mention George's name. She concluded her narrative with jerky facts relative to the scene in the Park. "Then I ran away," she said, "and a friend of mine came up. He had seen. And he thrashed him. When I got back to Mrs. Chater's her son had arrived—battered. He told his mother that he had seen me with a man and ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... in the 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 sentences perfectly clear ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... found the little dame in possession, and generally the lord and master gleaning food in redstart fashion; flitting around a branch, darting behind a leaf, over and under a twig, tail spread to keep his balance during these jerky movements, his bright oriole colors flashing as he dashed through a patch of sunlight,—a beautiful object, but a perfectly silent one. When his happiness demanded expression he flew to a maple-tree, and poured out his soul in the quaint though not very musical ditty of ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... physical and mental power. Not only the voluntary muscles become impotent, but the involuntary ones lose in effectiveness. Digestion is partly or wholly suspended. "Scared stiff" is a popular and truthful expression. The bodily rhythm is lost, the breathing becomes jerky and the heart ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... steps were heard hurrying along the hall and a little jerky knock announced unmistakably the presence ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... dogs, which had dropped down heavily on the ice to rest. His was a broken, jerky utterance, caused by the violence with which he hammered his numb hand upon the wood. "What have you done anyway that a two-legged other animal should come along, break you to harness, curb all your natural proclivities, and make slave- ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... remained stationary after it had risen a few inches from its bed, but the other end, which was nearest us, went up and up, pushed by some screwjack arrangement that lifted it with slow, jerky movements till it was nearly upright. The moonlight fell upon the under surface that was turned toward us, and we understood the manner in which Leith's friends had arranged for us to make our exit from this world. The bottom of the ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... the tight waistband, as fancy took him, and enjoying the warmth of his master's body. It was very interesting and amusing to see him poke his little head out between the buttons, or through a buttonhole of the blouse at intervals to ask, with glittering eye and jerky movement, for an occasional fly from his master's hand caught on the shafts or cover ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... message, and ask the operator to get it in the hands of the chief of police without an instant's loss of time," directed Mr. Seaton, speaking in jerky haste. ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... its surface which hermetically seals the meat from the air and keeps it perfectly sweet. In the summer it is necessary to dry the meat more quickly to keep it from spoiling. It is then made into "jerky" by cutting it into long, thin strips and hanging them up in the sun to dry. After it is thoroughly dried, it is tied up in bags and used as needed, either by eating it dry from the pocket when out on a tramp, or, if in camp, serving it ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... know when you want some more money. Write to the office, not to the house. I only wish you had asked me before this happened. I've been pretty successful, at least in business; but that's not everything." He paused and then went on, in short, jerky sentences. "Don't marry a saint, Jimmy. They're better to watch than to live with. Your sister never forgives anything, and that's a big mistake. It makes life hard sometimes. I suppose I'm getting a bit old, and I feel things. The doctor says ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... was openly nodding encouragement. Adhemar Meydieux rose heavily, and straightening up with a succession of jerky movements, caught himself squarely on his heels, and then, with great conviction, said: "See here, child, if I were your father, I should take you by the ear and put ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... slight rolling proves to me, beyond a doubt, that I am not on land. We are evidently moving, but the motion is scarcely perceptible. It is not a jerky, but rather a gliding movement, as though we were skimming through the water without effort, ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... indulging in a pot of fresh coffee. Haines was a small, sandy-complexioned man, with a straggling beard and light blue eyes. He appeared competent enough, a bundle of nervous energy, and yet there was something about the fellow which instantly impressed me unfavorably—probably his short, jerky manner of speech, and his inability to look straight ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... passages, down the stairs, with a jerky step, holding Clarisse under the arm, as he might have held a lay-figure, supporting her, carrying her almost. A court-yard, ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... fat man of middle age, with a thin voice and jerky manner. "I had Forbes yesterday, Mrs. Chiverton, to speak to me in your name," he announced. "Do you know him for the officious fellow he is, for ever meddling in other people's matters? For ten years he has pestered me about Morte, which is ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... nest till his wings are ready to use. The mocking-bird baby has a far different time. Victim of a devouring ambition that will not let him rest till either legs or wings will bear him, he scrambles out upon his native tree, stretches, plumes a little in a jerky, hurried way, and then boldly launches out in the air—alas!—to come flop to the ground, where he is an easy prey to boys and cats, both of whom are particularly fond of young mocking-birds. These parents are wiser ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... little, rosebud mouth pouted and smiled, and altogether she was so sweet and dainty and graceful that the middle-aged, gray-bearded Americano began to beam upon her with admiring eyes and to hover over her with jerky, heavy attempts at gallantry. He asked her name, but she took sudden alarm and answered only with a shrug of her shoulders and a swooning glance of her great black eyes. He put his arm about her waist ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... 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. Peters ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... all about her, 'Young man, I declare if I ain't obleged to ye jest as much as if you'd 'a' minded me.' She ventured near the window, and even put her head out. 'My! they look jest like flies a-walkin'! My! we can't look much to the angels lookin' down. They go awful jerky.' She said no more until we were almost at the bottom, then she turned to Miss Ross: 'I've a good mind to go round ag'in,' she declared, and when she was told that we were all 'going round ag'in,' she drew close to the window and made her ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... 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
... the hand that still fumbled at his mustache, and walked away with the jerky, jaunty gait of the old man who still affects youth, and Lady Luce composed her lovely face into a look of ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... individual had at first betrayed abyssmal ignorance of all save the virtues of stuffed crocodiles, but convinced at last that this was no trap, but a genuine situation from which he could profit, his greed overcame his native caution, and through the aid of his jerky English and Billy's jagged Arabic a certain measure of ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... 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 ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... 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
... I have only kept a careful and accurate diary, [Footnote: Out of all my diaries I have hardly been able to quote fifty pages, for on re- reading them I find they are not only full of Cabinet secrets but jerky, disjointed and dangerously frank.] and here, in the interests of my publishers and at the risk of being thought egotistical, it is not inappropriate that I should publish the following letters in connection with these diaries ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... moved with their old nervous habit, and the answer came in an odd, jerky, half-connected way: "I dunnot know why it should ha' done. I mun be mad, or summat. I nivver had no hope nor nothin': theer nivver wur no reason why I should ha' had. Ay, I mun be wrong somehow, or it wouldna stick to me i' this road. I conna get rid on it, an' I conna feel ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... running down his cheeks, and his sides shaking with gusts of merriment, my father took me upon his knee, and gave me the funniest kiss I ever had—a jerky kiss, as if a bee had bobbed against ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... his way back down the alley, beginning to see the merit in the liveryman's suggestions. Food—and a bath! What he wouldn't give for a bath! Hay to sleep on was fine; he had had far worse beds during the past four years. But a hot bath to be followed by a meal which was not the jerky, corn meal, bitter coffee of trail cooking! His pace quickened into a trot but slackened again as he neared the Four Jacks and remembered all the precautions ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... now once more running off the wind, and the quick, jerky motions of the schooner had given place to a series of long, easy, buoyant, floating movements, much more conducive to accurate shooting than those which had preceded them. I therefore resolved to try the effect of at least one more shot from the long gun, especially ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... than ever in her thin face, looking at her so wistfully? She dared not say it was impossible. But Aunt Emma had no such scruples. With a great clatter and racket, that lady fell upon the dishes that held Patty's almost untasted dinner and whisked them away while her tongue kept time to her jerky movements. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... 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
... road, he saw a man walking in the same direction in which he was going; a young man, slight and wiry, walking with quick, jerky strides. Calvin ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... attention to Parmalee's talk, which was thrown at me in jerky, desultory sentences, and interested me not at all. I went on with my work of investigation, and though I did not get down on my knees and examine every square inch of the carpet with a lens, yet I thoroughly examined ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... such a wonderful young man?" snapped a jerky little voice. "Johnny Gamble? You bet he ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... the trouble was, and Sadie told her in jerky sentences. Charnock had started for the railroad early that morning, and after he left she discovered that he had written ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... 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 ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... wagons are large, with great white cotton coverings, and generally drawn by six mules: the driver, usually a colored man, rides the first nigh mule, and has one rein, called the 'jerky rein,' running over the head of the mule before him, through a ring fastened to his headstall, and dividing on the back of the leader, and fastening to his bit. The mule is directed to one side or ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... true. A hostile observer of bands of Carlylites at Oxford and elsewhere might have been justified in describing the imperative duty of work as the theme of many an hour of strenuous idleness, and the superiority of golden silence over silver speech as the text of endless bursts of jerky rapture, while a too constant invective against cant had its usual effect of developing cant with a difference. To the incorrigibly sentimental all this was sheer poison, which continues tenaciously in the system. Others of robuster character no sooner came into contact with the world and its ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... his characteristic habit of phrase making and became more jerky and real. "I respected you, Alice," he went on. "I didn't love you but I hoped I might, and I played the game. I liked to see you in my house. You fitted in and made it more of a home than that barrack had ever been. I began to collect prints ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... impossible, Hamilton," I cried, when in short jerky sentences, as if afraid to give thought rein, he had answered my uncle's questioning. "Impossible! ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... he said, with spasmodic jocularity; "I'm uncommon glad to see you." He came to a jerky close, with an indrawing of his breath. "I'm about done," he went on. "Same old thing—sciatica. Took me just after I got here this afternoon; sent out one of the messengers to buy me a sofa, and here I've been ever ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... were swarming all about the boy. Some of the most daring were clawing their way up his trousers, but Stuart seemed to have no eyes for them. With jerky strokes, as though his arms were worked by a string, he struck and slashed at the air at some imaginary enemy about the height of ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... done! No ill-will, Mr. Melas, I hope, but we could not get on without you. If you deal fair with us you'll not regret it, but if you try any tricks, God help you!' He spoke in a nervous, jerky fashion, and with little giggling laughs in between, but somehow he impressed me with fear more than ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... sharp, jerky outbursts, and it seemed to me that to speak at all was very painful to him, and that his will all ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... that Mr. Tillott has not his persuasive powers!" she thought; Mr. Tillott's eloquence being, in fact, of a very limited order, chiefly exhibiting itself in little jerky questions about the spiritual and temporal welfare of his humble parishioners—questions which, in the vernacular language of agricultural labourers, "put a ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... crucial 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 ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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 ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... 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
... had just drunk was seething in him. Little by little he commanded that long disused throat, he recalled from the depths of his uncertain mind words and phrases. In short, jerky sentences, mostly ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... 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 ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... much more keenly, and she set herself with admirable singleness of purpose to restore Major Benjy's zest in life, and fill the gap. She wanted no assistance from others in this: Diva, for instance, with her jerky ways would be only too apt to jar on him, and her black dress might remind him of his loss if Miss Mapp had asked her to go shares in the task of making the Major's evenings less lonely. Also the weather, during the whole of January, was particularly inclement, ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... coat is tightly buttoned. Did you ever see a tourniquet? Well, this is one. All I have to do is to duck my head under his arm and begin to twist. I must twist rapidly—very rapidly. I know how to do it; twisting in a violent, jerky way, ducking my head under his arm with each revolution. Before he knows it, those detaining fingers of his will be detained. He will be unable to withdraw them. It is a powerful leverage. Twenty seconds after I have ...
— The Road • Jack London
... next morning. The soiree was to be three days later. The music is nothing remarkable; in fact, the whole thing (it is called "The Prodigal Son") is not worthy of him. I have not met any of my fellow- performers yet. Forgive this jerky letter; I have been interrupted a thousand times. Charles thinks it is time to go back to Paris; but we have just received an invitation from Baron Alfred Rothschild to spend Ascot week—a sejour de sept jours—with a party at a house ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... it essential to get rid of the girl entirely?" Holliday asked in a jerky fashion. "Isn't there any other means of keeping ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... 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 ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... the young adventurers left behind. This was the tenor of the message, but there was something about it that worried Frank. Lathrop, he knew, was an expert wireless operator, but the sending that he performed that morning was so jerky and irregular that the rankest amateur might have ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... play scales, octaves, double notes and trills? Then by all means concentrate your mind on them to the exclusion of everything else, but do not be surprised if, when, later on, you want to communicate a semblance of life to your mechanical motions, you succeed in obtaining no more than the jerky ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... in high spirits. He had grown very thin. With his nervous, jerky gestures, and the trepidation in his speech, he was like a caged lark. He was always with Yakob Somov, taciturn and serious beyond ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... Henry instinctively angry with him: his vague features, his weak, wandering eyes, peering from behind large glasses, his tow-coloured hair that seemed to have "washed-out," and above all, his squeaky voice that piped on one jerky note.... ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... turning to Elinor with a jerky bow, "I repeat my question. Why were you admitted to our class without having worked in any ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... the connection between the various singsongs and their respective performers. I would be aware that the bass voice with the flourishes in front of me belonged to the stuttering widower from Vitebsk, that the squeaky, jerky intonation to the right came from the red-headed fellow whom I loathed for his thick lips, or that the sweet, unassertive cadences that came floating from the east wall were being uttered by Reb Rachmiel, the "man of acumen" whose father-in-law had made a fortune as ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... 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
... backbone of a fish. For playing the instrument, they place its tail end, with the hollow side inwards, to the mouth, holding the extreme tip of that end in the fingers of the left hand, and keep the tongue of the instrument in a constant state of vibration, by smart, rapid, jerky pullings of ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... young man pointed the boat's stem down stream, and after a little jerky work on the bar stood clear ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... 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
... stars, to run white and naked in the darkness that I knew must feel like cool velvet, and to run and run and keep on running. One evening, plumb tuckered out—it had been a dreadful hard hot day, and the bread wouldn't raise and the churning had gone wrong, and I was all irritated and jerky—well, that evening I made mention to dad of this wanting to run of mine. He looked at me curious-some and a bit scared. And then he gave me two pills to take. Said to go to bed and get a good sleep and I'd be all hunky-dory in the morning. So I never mentioned my hankerings ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... six feet from the ground. He was quickly 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 ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... Thurston contradicted fiercely, as if that could make it different. He thought he could not bear those jerky sentences. ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... 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 ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... emerging thence a grotesque, miniature man, holding, uplifted in his hand, a hammer of size proportionate to his own figure. Mr. Norton sat motionless, while this small specimen proceeded, with a jerky gait and many bobbing grimaces, across a wire stretched to the opposite corner of the room, where stood a tall, ebony clock. When within a short distance of the clock another tiny door in its side flew open; the little man entered ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... started; sometimes preparatory to and during the utterance there is a tremulous motion about the muscles of the mouth. The hesitation increases, and instead of a steady flow of modulated, articulate sounds, speech is broken up into a succession of irregular, jerky, syllabic fragments, without modulation, and often accompanied by a tremulous vibration of the voice. Syllables are unconsciously dropped out, blurred, or run into one another, or imperfectly uttered; especially is difficulty found with consonants, particularly explosive sounds, b, ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... picture me, when first it was given into my care, turning it over, curiously, and making a swift, jerky examination. A small book it is; but thick, and all, save the last few pages, filled with a quaint but legible handwriting, and writ very close. I have the queer, faint, pit-water smell of it in my nostrils now as I write, and my fingers have ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... 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. ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... 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 being interrupted ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... sat with his 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
... its wind in its first race, but of sporting ancestry and unable to forget it, especially when Charlie's adventures in the Green River under-world cheated it of exercise too long, was remembering it now, and bolting down the hilly little street, settled at last into a jerky and tentative gait with the air of accepting their guidance until it could arrange further plans, but remembering its ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... Ivan!" exclaimed Warren, after a few miles of this jerky progress. "What ails the thing? Do you suppose the ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... returned to the upright in the same number of counts, and at an unusually slow "One" it is bent as far back as comfortable only from the waist, being returned to the upright at "Two." Care should be taken to see that this motion is slow and not jerky. The entire movement should be repeated ...
— Keeping Fit All the Way • Walter Camp
... of the dove for its course of about 540 feet is watched by the peasants with breathless attention, for they take its easy or jerky flight as ominous of the weather for the rest of the year and of the prospects of harvest. If the bird sails along without a hitch, then the summer will be fine, but if there be sluggishness of movement, and one halt, then another, the year is ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... came in one tense jerky burst, "Miss Mary it's only working under Miss Jane now would make me leave you so. I know how good you are and I work myself sick for you and for Mr. Edgar and for Miss Jane too, only Miss Jane she will want everything different from ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... party of fowls, who were sitting together on a dusty ledge above the road, sheltering from the wind. I do not know whether they meant to be as humorous as they were, but I can hardly think they were not amused at each other. They stood and lay very close together, with fierce glances, and quick, jerky motions of the head. Now and then one, tired of inaction, raised a deliberate claw, bowed its head, scratched with incredible rapidity, shook its tumbled feathers, and looked round with angry self-consciousness, as though to say: "I will ask any one to think me absurd at his peril." Now and ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... his victim is contemplating flight. As they entered the comfortable little sitting-room of the suite, a young woman rose gracefully from the desk at which she had been writing. With perfect composure she smiled and extended her slim hand to the American as he crossed the room with Medcroft's jerky introduction dinging ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... have 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
... men have their moments of depression. R. Jones' face clouded, and jerky remarks about hardness of times and losses on the Stock Exchange began to proceed from him. As Scotland Yard had discovered, he lent money on occasion; but he did not lend it to ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... seemed to liven up under the influence of speed. The wind was howling now, and conversation was impossible, except in short, jerky sentences. They were on the high level of the prairie and were getting the full benefit of the open ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... a jerk, ran with increasing gait for a hundred yards, and then suddenly the jerky progress ceased. The machine swayed gently from side to side, and looking over, the passenger saw ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... not hear a word he was saying, after those first jerky sentences. He stood looking past Bill at a drunken Irishman who was making erratic progress up the street; and he was no more conscious of the Irishman than he was of Bill's scorching condemnation of the town which could ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... 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
... of her short breakfast she lit a cigarette, and began to pace up and down her sitting-room with a jerky, nervous gait, quite unlike her wonted graceful, easy, swinging walk. She had to relight her cigarette, and as she did so, Elizabeth Twitcher, who was clearing away the breakfast, perceived that her hands were shaking. There was plainly more ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... was distinct enough to convey to the ear the words of a well-known hymn—a hymn sung in jerky fragments, the concluding syllable always rising and ending with a gasp, as though the singer found his task too heavy, and was bound to ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... queer life! What a queer life for a girl to lead!" said the little doctor in jerky tones. "And is she ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... Heavies besides the flagship, with twelve Mediums and twenty Lights. They slanted down in a jerky evasive course while pictures flashed on screens to be compared ...
— Tulan • Carroll Mather Capps
... wooden bench covered with leather; and the old servant got in beside her, wrapped her up with a big cloak, and holding an umbrella over her head, cried: "Quick, Denis, let us be off." The young man climbed up beside his mother and whipped up the horse, whose jerky pace made the two women bounce ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant |
