"Shaky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the stone post this way. You are actually trembling. Remember, it's only a young girl you are to face on this occasion, and a deucedly pretty one, at that. The time that you will be more apt to be shaky is when you face her father; but I guess ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... mind. Facing me were from four to five thousand soldiers, well equipped, well disciplined, backed up by a strong artillery; just behind me my men, 500 at the outside, with some patched-up guns, almost too shaky ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... might well study this speech of Buzfuz as a guide to the conducting of a case, and above all of rather a "shaky" one. Not less excellent is his smooth and plausible account of Mrs. Bardell's setting up in lodging letting. He really makes it "interesting." One thinks of some fluttering, helpless young widow, setting out in the ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... pale and shaky, but I come of stiffish stock, and I wouldn't have backed down then, it seemed to me, if they had been going to boil me alive. I suppose it sounds foolish, and if I had had plenty of time I have no doubt my common-sense would have made me crawl. ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... away from the window and smiled his old Buddha smile. With clumsy creaking precautions they mounted the stair. The moment for the climax came; there was a rush all together, a breaking down of the shaky door. The crew burst into the room—an empty room—and stared puzzled and stupefied at the walls and at ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... Mrs. Duke, bridling, with something almost like a shaky authority, "Mr. Moon may have what ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... words came on a note of rather shaky laughter. Roberta's arm lay across her mother's knee, her head upon it. She turned her head downward for an instant, burying her face in the angle of her arm. Mrs. Gray regarded the mass of dark locks beneath her hand with a ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... but she clung to him as if she could never let him go. Her father stood near her, all the lines in his face deepened into bitterness. To him Val said: "Why, dad, what's the matter? Your hand is shaky. Don't you get this thing eatin' at ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... time to catch one glimpse of it, for he lifted his arm and flung it in the pool. It flashed and was gone, and then, before the moony circles on the water had got to the bank, the man was off. He walked crooked and shaky, and something told me as the young fellow had done terrible wrong and ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... Bayonne. He was received, not with royal honors, but by his own legates, the three grandees whom he had sent to Napoleon; and they told him with mournful accents that the Emperor with his own lips had declared that the Bourbons could no longer reign in Spain. It was with dejected mien and shaky steps that the young monarch and his suite followed Duroc and Berthier to the wretched quarters provided for their residence. The Empress was, throughout the three months spent at Bayonne, both gracious and conciliatory, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... outstretched: and deserting Lenox, she flew to him, anathematising her own folly in a rapid flow of French. "Take me to my tent now," she concluded, linking her arm in his. "I still feel idiotically shaky, and I am certainly no loss to my side!—Mr Bathurst"—she turned in Jeff's direction—"please forgive me. I promise I'll never ask you to lend ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... I have given myself away hopelessly," she whispered, clutching him with rather a shaky ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... the claret, will you, Curtis?" asked Wilford. "Punch is a beverage I don't patronise; it makes a man's hand shaky." ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... heard him speak, or read his writings. Thus, when in March 1544 the Elector's wife, Sybil, asked him 'anxiously and diligently' about his own health and that of his wife and children, he answered: 'Thank God, we are well, and better than we deserve of God. But no wonder, if I am sometimes shaky in the head. Old age is creeping on me, which in itself is cold and unsightly, and I am ill and weak. The pitcher goes to the well until it breaks. I have lived long enough; God grant me a happy end, that this useless ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... away, singing at his easel or, fishing-rod in hand, leaping a stile. Our WILL stares after the fellow for quite a long time, so long that the two melt into the one who finishes LOB's brandy. He is scarcely intoxicated as he appears before the lady of his choice, but he is shaky and ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... with a sad, shaky voice, holding out his hand, "have I changed so much? Don't you ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... means! It's an interesting case. We have Merridew for us. I am settling the brief." Alas, for her. The infatuate even stayed to detail points of the cause. Much, it appeared, depended upon the Chancellor of the diocese: a very shaky witness. He had a passion for qualification, and might tie himself into as many knots as an eel on a night-line. Oh, might he indeed? And this, this was in the scales against her pride and joy! She was left—alone on Naxos now—while James ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... however, does not often indulge in a logical stride so long or on such shaky footing as this. Through more or less cloudiness of expression, he gives us many striking and satisfactory views, looking towards a complete synthesis of the glorious system of things to which we belong, makes out the universe as habitable and cheerful as it is wide, and leaves us admiring its ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... under the guidance of a single biographer. We are still left in the dark, it is true, as to Keats's race and descent. Whether Keats's father came to London from Cornwall or not, Sir Sidney has not been able to decide on the rather shaky evidence that has been put forward. If it should hereafter turn out that Keats was a Cornishman at one remove, Matthew Arnold's conjecture as to the "Celtic element" in him, as in other English poets, may revive in ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... of common note-paper, bearing the printed heading of the hotel. Across it was written in shaky characters the following: ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... was rather queer. The men were all tired out working at the pumps, and Monsieur Chatelard ordered a seaman named Bazinet and me to relieve two of them. He said he would call us when the boats were lowered, as the yacht was then getting pretty shaky. Bazinet and I worked a long time; and when finally we got on deck, thinking the Jeanne D'Arc was nearly done for, the boats had put off. We heard some one shouting, and Bazinet got frightened and jumped for the boat. He thought they'd wait for him. It ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... stories about its musty squalor. He crossed the road to make a nearer inspection; and as he stood gazing at the dishonoured thresholds, at the stained and cracked boarding of the blind windows, at the rusty paling and the broken gates, there sounded from somewhere near a thin, shaky strain of music, the notes of a concertina played with uncertain hand. The sound seemed to come from within the houses, yet how could that be? Assuredly no one lived under these crazy roofs. The musician was playing 'Home, Sweet Home,' and as Goldthorpe listened ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... cockerels; they did not crow very much, and at first I paid little attention to them. After a few days I remarked that one individual among them was rapidly acquiring the clear vigorous strain of the adult bird. Compared with that fine note which I have described, it was still weak and shaky, but in shape it was similar, and the change had come while its brethren were still uttering brief and harsh screeches as at the beginning. Probably, where there is a great mixture of varieties, it is the same ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... shaky as to the knees, but with her head held high, leaving him on the little veranda with his dead pipe in his mouth and his German-American newspaper held before his face. She had returned, still terrified, to find the house dark and ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... damages, so we were put to our wits' end. We first sent back a mile or so, and bought a raw-hide. Gathering up the fragments of the pole and cutting the hide into strips, we finished it in the rudest manner. As long as the hide was green, the pole was very shaky; but gradually the sun dried the hide, tightened it, and the pole actually held for about a month. This cost us nearly a day of delay; but, when damages were repaired, we harnessed up again, and reached the crossing of the Cosumnes, ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... lamplight, but he knew himself that these were devices to gain time. The pearl showed all too clearly a flaw that would make it valueless. Every one waited for his verdict. He was conscious that his voice was a little shaky, but he answered as steadily ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... to the lower but safer and firmer ground of fact, let us cautiously drive our first pile into the shaky morass of early ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... headstones, are deadly black and brown snakes. They have made this old, time-forgotten cemetery their own favourite haunting place; for the waters of the creek are near, and on its margin they find their prey. Once, so the shaky old wharfinger will tell you, a naval lieutenant, who had been badly wounded in the first Maori war, died in the commandant's house. He was buried here on the bank of the creek, and one day his young wife who had come from ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... would stay by me," Lionel wrote, with rather a shaky hand. "I'm in dreadful trouble. I undertook to pay Percival Miles L1100 and Lord Rockminster L300 to-day without fail; and I haven't a farthing, and don't know where to ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... man appeared to be pondering; indeed, his thoughts could hardly be said to be present when he uttered the words. For though the tabernacle was getting shaky by reason of years and merry living, so that what was going on inside might often be guessed without by the movement of the hangings, as in a puppet-show with worn canvas, he could be quiet enough when scheming any plot of particular neatness, which had less emotion than impishness ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... or will be, with a few filings; but they are not remarkable for white-hot vehemence of inspiration; tepid works! respectable versifications of very proper and even original sentiments: kind of Hayleyistic, I fear—but no, this is morbid self-depreciation. The family is all very shaky in health, but our motto is now Al Monte! in the words of Don Lope, in the play the sister and I are just beating through with two bad dictionaries and an insane grammar. I to the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... market receive more consideration, and a great deal more money, than an average European prince;—and yet the poor dry-rotted unfortunate whose decadence we are tracing is like a leper in the scattering effects which he produces during his shaky promenade. He is indeed alone in the world, and brandy or gin is his only counsellor and comforter. As to character, the last rag of that goes when the first sign of indolence is seen; the watchers have eyes like cats, and the self-restrained men among them have ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... she couldn't be frightened. The "matter"?—why, it was sufficiently the matter, with all this, that she felt a little sick. For it was not the Prince that she had been prepared to regard as primarily the shaky one. Shakiness in Charlotte she had, at the most, perhaps postulated—it would be, she somehow felt, more easy to deal with. Therefore if HE had come so far it was a different pair of sleeves. There was nothing to choose between them. ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... at least anything you could dignify by that name, but we do have horrid little shaky earthquakes. We don't have mosquitoes in hordes, such as the Jersey coast provides, but we do sometimes come home and hear what sounds like a cosy tea-kettle in the courtyard, whereupon the defender of the family ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... the girl bent her head down, and a few stray tears came, for it was wicked, and she knew it. But before the water got head enough to fall from her eyes, she kind of thought that the young minister's voice was getting shaky, either with mirth or with sadness. To find out which, she slyly looked up, and both she and the minister laughed long and loud. So there was an end of the jobation that he meant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... us," contended Eph Somers, somewhat shaky in his tones. "It's just thinking what might happen—if we were to strike a water-logged old hull of ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... in the distance, the low sighing note of the sea. The silence was emphasized by the fact that for the last week Antony had had the hum of traffic in his ears, and had but this moment come from the noise of trains and the rattle of a shaky dog-cart. ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... we really can't come so far," said a determined voice. "We have only a shaky old motor—our new one isn't ready yet—and besides, we want all our ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... assistance of Tanis's Bunch, the Doppelbraus, and other companions in forgetfulness, there was not an evening for two weeks when he did not return home late and shaky. With his other faculties blurred he yet had the motorist's gift of being able to drive when he could scarce walk; of slowing down at corners and allowing for approaching cars. He came wambling into the house. If Verona and Kenneth Escott were ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... to be written up that day. Finally I put the question to the vote, for Jo is so decided in her manner that she makes me feel wobbly unless I am conscious of being backed up by Robbie Belle. I suppose it is because my own opinions are so shaky from the inside view that I hate to appear variable from the outside. It would have been horrid to yield to Jo's arguments and change my ideas right there before the whole board. The rest of them except Jo had fallen into ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... was hastily scrawled in pencil and the signature was very shaky, but Helen knew the writing in a minute, it ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... enough, ended with a shaky voice and flashing eye, which, the moment it met Dr. Grey's, ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... arbour waited Mark, with gun and cap laid upon the table. He walked up and down on the shaky floor, and whenever he trod on one end of a board the other rose in the air, and ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... Greenfield, don't know whether the Colorado is a trout stream or a mill pond. Their actual investment doesn't amount to half what you have put into your work, for the sale of water rights to the settlers is paying all the expense of their extensions and they won't put up a cent to rebuild their shaky old structures. And look where we stand! We have put more money into that country now than the Company and you together, and we won't pay operating expenses until the land is developed. And still the public is roaring about our rates. We don't want ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... brag too much," the Doctor laughed. "You'll find you are pretty shaky. Sister Francesca has a little room fixed for you and some clean clothes; how ...
— Lucia Rudini - Somewhere in Italy • Martha Trent
... makes them shaky," said an official, "and the strongest-minded generally become childish when they have been here for five ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... morbid strangeness of this sinister vegetation, but at the eldritch atmosphere and odor of the dilapidated house, whose unlocked front door was often entered in quest of shudders. The small-paned windows were largely broken, and a nameless air of desolation hung round the precarious panelling, shaky interior shutters, peeling wall-paper, falling plaster, rickety staircases, and such fragments of battered furniture as still remained. The dust and cobwebs added their touch of the fearful; and ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... but her policy of seclusion for Hinpoha was getting shaky. Mrs. Homer Evans was a power in the community, and what she did set the fashion in a good many directions. Aunt Phoebe was very anxious to keep her as a permanent acquaintance, and if Mrs. Evans gave her sanction to this Camp Fire ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... the man struggled to a sitting posture. A thin trickle of blood oozed from the corner of his mouth. He raised a shaky hand to his face and inserting a long black nailed forefinger between his puffed lips, ran it along the inner edge of his gums and drew forth a yellow tooth. Leaning forward he spat out a mouthful of blood, ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... instructions printed in German script the few words he could summon strength to write. The scrap of paper was torn and smudgy and a thumb-print in blood was impressed on one corner. Each word was more shaky and labored than the preceding one, as if each had been traced only by a supreme effort. On it was written in German, "Good-bye, Mother and Father. My leg is crushed. The French are very kind and...." A foot-note ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... pace was too hard for her. She couldn't face that highest rock; the one below had made her feel cold and queer and shaky as she stood on it. Besides, why was she trying, for the first time in her life, to go Nan's pace, which had always been, and was now more than ever before, too hot and mettlesome for her? She didn't know why; only that Nan had been, somehow, all ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... stories he had had printed in magazines, secretly shown to his proud mother, were now brought forth and chuckled over with glee by the Professor. The famous biologist struggled through one of the stories, vowed he had read them all, cheerily patted Bill's arm with his shaky old hand, and cheerfully abandoned the hope he had held of seeing his ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... thought in Flint's mind as he emerged from the crowded room and made his way down the shaky stairs to the outer door, was of the physical delight of inhaling fresh air. He drew in two or three deep, lung-filling breaths, then he opened his coat and shook it to the air as he had seen doctors do after coming ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... stand it no longer; so I got up, unfastened my cabin door to get some air, and began rubbing myself down with a coarse towel. Heavens! it felt delightful; for although my bones still ached, and I was very shaky on my legs, my head was better, and my spirits began to rise. I put on my pyjamas, went on deck, and had a look round. It was nearly dark, the rain had cleared off, a young moon was just lifting over the trees, and the little bay was as quiet as the grave—except for the cries of a colony of flying ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke
... In long shaky strokes Sargent copied the data. Waiting always for a word of help his hand moved faithfully the unsteady symbols, a faint hue of shame flickering behind his dull skin. Amor matris: subjective and objective genitive. With her weak blood and wheysour ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... reluctant departure. Standing on Charlotte's shaky little porch he looked up at her as she stood on the threshold above him. Against the light in the room behind her the outlines of her lithe young figure were to him adorable. He took her hand and held it for a minute with a strong pressure which spoke ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... the mystic band, Wind we round thee, hand in hand; Whene'er thou hear'st thy chieftain's call Rest not, pause not, hither crawl; Or to the realms of creepy-crawley, Shivery-shaky, we will haul thee!" ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... all the same, and recalled happy hours with wonderful vividness. She remembered the post-chaise and the postillion. "He was such a pert little fellow, and how we laughed at him! He must be either dead or a very shaky old man by now," said the old lady. She seemed to smell the scent of meadow-sweet that was so powerful in a lane through which they drove; and how clearly she could see the clean little country inn where they spent the honeymoon! She seemed to be there now, ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... sense of colour in the world, and the more intoxicated he is, the more delicate and beautiful is his painting. Sometimes, after more than the usual number of aperitifs, he will sit down in a cafe to do a sketch, with his hand so shaky that he can hardly hold a brush; he has to wait for a favourable moment, and then he makes a jab at the panel. And the immoral thing is that each of these little jabs is lovely. He's the most delightful ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... she was not right-minded; whereupon she observed; "I don't mind having my morals attacked; but I should object to be pulled up for my grammar"—meaning that she was sure of her morals, but was half afraid that her grammar might be shaky. As is inevitable, however, under such circumstances, this obvious interpretation was rejected, and the most uncharitable construction put upon her words. It was said, among other things, that she evidently could not be moral at heart, whatever her ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... my cup, in perfect copperplate writing, the word "wait." I was annoyed by it, for what is more annoying than having to wait? Sometimes it may happen that the tea-leaves—as with their relatives, the tumbler and automatic writing—become a little shaky in their spelling. But this is not a serious defect, and the trifling errors do not prevent the word from being translatable. It is a recognised fact that writing seen through a medium, whether it be ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... "So would I yesterday. But, by Jingo! he can wear magenta socks on his head if he likes for me! He's all white, and he has the heart of a gentleman!" Little Kidd's voice went shaky and his eyes had the curious shine that appeared in them only in moments of deepest excitement, but if he had only known it, he had never been so near storming the gate of Miss Belle's heart as at that moment. She showed her sympathy with Kiddie's attitude by giving Mr. Finlayson "the time of his ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... Hamel said. "I saw him go. He looked very shaky. I understood that Mr. Fentolin sent him ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to Harold and started homeward. They still felt a little shaky as a result of the bomb episode, but before long the walk and the crisp night air had refreshed them and ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene
... experience, and he wanted that white Tuan to know—he turned towards Brierly, who didn't raise his head—that he had acquired a knowledge of many things by serving white men on the sea for a great number of years—and, suddenly, with shaky excitement he poured upon our spellbound attention a lot of queer-sounding names, names of dead-and-gone skippers, names of forgotten country ships, names of familiar and distorted sound, as if the hand of dumb time had been at work on them for ages. They stopped ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... if he had been to jump off a church steeple. But in another minute he was climbing the stairs. His legs seemed rather shaky and his tongue felt like a piece of wood. The moment he opened the door, however, all his fears and hesitations were gone. Once more he was the old Keith who had made a play of ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... and Clara still lingered with us. Ben was as yet unhurt, and first lieutenant of his company. He wrote us that battle was not what he had thought it; he was not shaky at all, and the smell of powder covered every fear; he had only one thought and that was to do his duty. A letter full of sorrow came from Mary. Her mother had passed from earth, and her father was going on to a little farm they owned a few miles from the city, and she, with her husband and Althea ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... articles are positively known to be late translations of French-English originals, and the others are very uncertain. You really cannot found any safe literary generalisations on so very small a basis of such very shaky matter. In fact, Mr Arnold's argument for the presence of "Celtic magic," &c., in Celtic poetry comes to something like this. "There is a quality of magic in Shakespeare, Keats, &c.; this magic must be Celtic: therefore it must be in Celtic poetry." Fill up the double enthymeme who list, I am not ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... occurred, which has filled me with an even greater terror, than did the Pit fear. I will write it down now, and, if anything more happens, endeavor to make a note of it, at once. I have a feeling, that there is more in this last affair, than in all those others. I am shaky and nervous, even now, as I write. Somehow, I think death is not very far away. Not that I fear death—as death is understood. Yet, there is that in the air, which bids me fear—an intangible, cold horror. I felt it last night. ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... strokes; the writing on the card is in thin, angular, what are commonly called crabbed strokes. Yet it is supposed that Herman put that card outside his bedroom door. How is it, then, that Herman's handwriting was thick and stunted when he registered at seven o'clock and slender and a bit shaky when he wrote this card at, say, half-past ten or eleven? Of course, Herman, or whatever his real name is, never wrote the line on that card, and never pinned that ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... truth," Mr. Simeon confessed, "this is my fair copy of the Master's Gaudy Sermon. I am running it through and correcting the Greek accents. I am always shaky at accents." ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... young Ward, "has a story to the effect that there is a great boom in certain railroad stocks owing to some secret operations of Mr. Barclay. They don't know what he is doing, but things are pretty shaky. He ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... his name. He was an old man, and very shaky on his pins. His hand trembled as with a palsy, especially noticeable when he poured his whiskey, though I never knew him to spill a drop. He had been twenty-eight years in Melanesia, ranging from German New Guinea ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... ... It's easy to talk that way, Mr. Flamm! But if you was put into such circumstances, you'd be thinkin' different too.—I know how shaky father's gettin'! An' the landlord has given us notice too. A new tenant is to move in, I believe! An' then it's father's dearest wish that everythin's ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Fred, trying to control his shaky voice; "I've brought you company." Then he closed the door, walked over, and pulled down the shades, and turning again went on to say: "Here's somebody who's come from the other side of the world to see you all. ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... the letters mentioned in the narrative were destroyed, with the exception of the last note which Eustace received, or rather which he would have received had not Saunders intercepted it. That I have seen myself. The handwriting was thin and shaky, the handwriting of an old man. I remember the Greek "e" was used in "appointment." A little thing that amused me at the time was that Saunders seemed to keep the note pressed between ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... you know him, the bloke with a wooden leg. Well, as he was going back to his native place, he wanted to treat us. Oh! We were all right, if it hadn't been for that devil of a sun. In the street everybody looks shaky. Really, all ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... down!" "Olalala!" "Aita maitai!" and the venerable orator took his seat. He was once a governor of a territory under President Harrison, and now lived off his pension, shaky, sans teeth, sans hair, but never ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... sir, but I'm very shaky. Legs must be a regular pair of cowards, sir, for they won't hurry a ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... and his own whisper was a little shaky. "It's one thing to see a grizzly in a cage, and another to see him out here in the dark in these wild mountains. And that fellow must weigh at least a ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... his shaky French accent; "I'll come!" and he put his hand on her arm, with a glance that matched her own. She seemed pretty well indifferent which of us it should be, and ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... wiped his gun he drew a shaky chair to the pine table and sat down. His daughter watched him, and when he bent his gray head she covered her eyes with one ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... to the cemetery she would see others there: women in black, with a fresher sorrow than hers; and sometimes the squire, who was beginning now to grow feeble and shaky with age, would be sitting on a bench among the shrubbery beside a grave on which he had placed flowers. The grave was Phrony's. Once he spoke to her of Wickersham. He had brought a suit against the old man, claiming that he had a title ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... 'dug-out' canoe is rather a shaky craft. When two or three are lashed together, and a native cot (charpai) is stretched across, the passenger can make himself very comfortable. The boats are poled by men standing in ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... minutes; he was wet with perspiration when he lay back on his pillows, a shaky smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He had a secret defense against the Terror. He giggled a little at the thought of what Aunt Bee ...
— Native Son • T. D. Hamm
... faint away. Then she began to cry, and kiss and hug me. And that night I heard her talking to Aunt Hattie and saying, "To think that that poor innocent child has to suffer, too!" and some more which I couldn't hear, because her voice was all choked up and shaky. ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... the question with obvious indifference, yet his green eyes still studied her critically. Olga poured out some water with a hand so shaky that it splashed over. He reached forward and dabbed it up ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... going to faint; but it makes me sick and shaky to think of a woman freezing to death so near us that if she had cried for help we might perhaps have ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... worthy old Ancient, who once held the sway of the heavens, Your realm seems a little bit shaky; what mortals call ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... in the village, and, halfway down its main thoroughfare, went up a street of gloom and narrowness between dingy workshops. At one of them, shaky, and gray with the stain of years, they halted. The two lower windows in front were dim with dirt and cobwebs. A board above them was the rude sign of Sam Bassett, carpenter. On the side of the old shop was a flight of sagging, rickety stairs. At the height of a man's head an old brass dial was ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... Harbison down there?" she asked breathlessly. "I left him on the roof and went down to my room for my scarf, and when I went back he had disappeared. He—he doesn't seem to be in the house." She tried to laugh, but her voice was shaky. "He couldn't have got down without passing me, anyhow," she supplemented. "I suppose I'm silly, but so many queer things ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the strong kind of tobacco, which soldiers affect, is often very injurious to them, especially to very young soldiers. It renders them nervous and shaky, gives rise to palpitation, and is a factor in the production of the irritable or so-called "trotting-heart" and tends to impair the ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... exaggeration—altogether, so overdoes the part that it is only the wildest and emptiest Tory who is taken in by him. What spoils the whole thing to my mind is that it is all so evidently artificial—so palpably pumped up. Clapping his hand on his breast, lifting his shaky fingers to Heaven, Mr. Russell is always in a frenzied protestation of honesty, of rugged and unassailable virtue, of bitter vaticination against the wickedness of the rest of mankind. No man could be as honest as ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... looked a heap better, but still shaky; his wife had a tender half sad smile on her face, while Barbie was radiant with the joy she had waited for so long; she had kept her father, she had found her mother, an' she was about to meet—her lover. I saw the Sioux Injuns doin' the dance once, where they tie thongs through their breast muscles ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... beatin' it out of there by the cellar, I hears some whisperin' as I was passin' one of the end doors. Savvy? I hadn't made no noise, an' they hadn't heard me. I gets a peek in, 'cause the door's cracked. It was French Pete an' Marny Day. I listens. An' after about two seconds I was goin' shaky for fear some one would come along an' I wouldn't get the whole of it. Take it from me, Shluk, it was ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... a shaky hand, and thrust it upon me without a word, merely pointing out four or five ill-printed lines of latest news. This was the item ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... The noise is beyond all belief; the creaking, trampling, shouting, clattering; it is an incessant storm. We have not yet got our masts quite safe; the new wire-rigging stretches more than was anticipated (of course), and our main-topmast is shaky. The crew have very hard work, as incessant tacking is added to all the extra work incident to a new ship. On Saturday morning, everybody was shouting for the carpenter. My cabin was flooded by a leak, and I ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... be of him. And the dozen years had vindicated his attitude, so that he was as sure of her as he was of the diurnal rotation of the earth. And now, was the form his fancy took, the rotation of the earth was a shaky proposition and old Oom Paul's flat world might be ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... of the nerves,—say, when a man feels "shaky,"—it takes but little to convince him that anything which may possibly not be all right is to a moral certainty all wrong. To sleep another night in that room, with the windows open,—and who would shut his windows in July?—directly exposed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... said Aunt Martha, her voice shaky, as she nestled her head close to the girl's. But her eyes shone ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... carried out on to the shaky platform in front of the shanties, one of which was dignified by the title of hotel, and to Esau's great disgust, Gunson's two chests and a long wooden case were set down close to them. Then three men who had been passengers landed, and lastly the little Chinaman, who ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... of it. My word! Never mind about them being horribly savage—how brave they must have been! Why, I felt regularly shaky at having to get up yonder with no enemy ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... tea's what he needs first thing," suggested Ed, in a shaky voice, as Shad paused in his ramblings. "Dick, you cut some wood, now, an' I'll be fillin' th' kettle with ice an' get un over. Bob better ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... which Louie behaved with the same indefinable insolence—whether as regarded the food or the china, or the shaky moderator lamp, a relic from David's earliest bachelor days, which only he could coax into satisfactory burning—Lucy made the move, and said ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... run through flood his neighbor's land must restore the value of the grain he has damaged. The owner of a vicious ox which has gored a man must pay a heavy fine, provided he knew the disposition of the animal and had not blunted its horns. A builder who puts up a shaky house which afterwards collapses and kills the tenant is himself to be put to death. On the other hand, the code has some rude features. Punishments were severe. For injuries to the body there was the simple rule of retaliation: an eye for an ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... of the Kingdom of Saxony known as Upper Lusatia runs down to the Bohemian frontier. About ten miles from the frontier line there stand to-day the mouldering remains of the old castle of Gross-Hennersdorf. The grey old walls are streaked with slime. The wooden floors are rotten, shaky and unsafe. The rafters are worm-eaten. The windows are broken. The damp wall-papers are running to a sickly green. Of roof there is almost none. For the lover of beauty or the landscape painter these ruins have little charm. But to us these tottering ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... us to a wooden footbridge,—a narrow, shaky contrivance, with a treacherous footing and a slender hand-rail. Here the bottom of the cave seemed to have dropped out, and the roof to have gone in search of it; and but for the dim glimpse of the rock on the other side one might have suspected that this bridge would launch him into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... staff in her shaky hand, And gaen up the stair of Will Mudie's land; She has looked in the face of Will Mudie's wean, And the wean it was dead that very same e'en. Next day she has gane to the Nethergate, And looked ower the top of Rob Rorison's ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... judge what he is likely to do or become. You know that he is from the West, the Far West, likely to be afflicted with local and provincial views, not to say heresies, and great vested interests within his own party feel a little shaky about him. We cannot have a revolutionary, or even a parochial, character in the presidential chair. Those interests which are the very bulwark of the public must be respected. We must watch over him, and in order to know how and ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... quite useful people. But they do not as a rule sit reading in the middle of the morning, on the next seat to their master and mistress! Do they? However, if Dick is coming to-morrow, we can discuss the valet question with him. Take my arm, Helen. I feel a bit shaky when I walk. Now tell me—why did ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... doubt proved himself an invaluable ally of the Dutchman in fixing up the charges. I don't believe he would manufacture a story out of whole cloth, but once his mind was set in a certain direction he could build up a good one on very shaky foundations. Perhaps he had an animus against these bumptious, undeferential, overcritical Americans, and thought it was time to give one of them a lesson. Perhaps he was tired of trapping ordinary garden variety spies of the Belgian brand. It would be a pleasing ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... John was soon undergoing cross-examination. He proved to be the cousin of Mrs. Hannah Peters' first husband who was drowned on the Grand Banks fifteen or sixteen years before. "John-ee" was, like so many of his kind, a bit shaky on names and dates but strong on generalities. However, everybody except the few skeptics from the Phipps' place seemed satisfied and made no ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... whilst my eyes were searching the far distance, my companion gave a sudden scream, and pointed—at a human head protruding from the snow. He recognised the schoolmaster. We dug him out of the hard snow and found in his pocket a paper on which a shaky hand had written in pencil: "Christmas Day. At sunset I beheld the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... was desperately in earnest was plain to be seen: his voice was shaky, and his hand, I noticed, was shaky, too, when he held it out entreating us to lend him ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... the hose upon him. But he brought out his man safe and sound, and, for the twentieth time perhaps, had his name recorded on the roll of merit. His comrades tell how, at one of the twenty, the fall of a building in Hall Place had left a workman lying on a shaky piece of wall, helpless, with a broken leg. It could not bear the weight of a ladder, and it seemed certain death to attempt to reach him, when Banta, running up a slanting beam that still hung to its fastening with one end, leaped from perch to perch upon the wall, where hardly a goat could ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... know better presently, for here we are," Uncle Harry said gently; and in a few minutes more they were all in a shabby, shaky, but roomy old carriage, driving along ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... an intoxicated little Asticot that trotted by his side to my mother's residence. There over gin-and-water the bargain was struck. My mother pocketed half-a-crown and with shaky unaccustomed fingers signed her name across a penny-stamp at the foot of a document which Paragot had drawn up. I believe each of them was convinced that they had executed a legal deed. My mother after inspecting me critically for a moment wiped my nose with the piece ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... life also, if that was necessary," said Teresa in a shaky voice, as she turned back to her duties in ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... are over, The engineer needs rest; My hand is shaky; I'm feeling A tugging pain i' my breast; But here, as the twilight gathers, I'll tell you a tale of the road, That'll ring in my head forever Till ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... end marriage. Marriage shouldn't begin with law. It ought to look beautiful at the start, at least, though one may know it's a shaky scraw." ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... Miss Felicia. I am a little shaky," replied Jack, in a faint voice, and the carriage kept on its way to Mrs. Hicks's leaving the good lady on ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Palmer was quite willing to pay actual damages, but he had refused to be robbed. A compromise had finally been made, and Dupre agreed to withdraw his suit upon the payment of fifty dollars. To this contract the old man now affixed his signature, in a very shaky hand. ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... is the error of Bedouin or Afghan. Does not China do the same when she mistakes hostility to foreigners for patriotism? By this blunder she runs the risk of alienating her best friends, England and America. A farmer attempting to rope up a shaky barrel in which a hen was sitting on a nest full of eggs, the silly fowl mistook him for an enemy and flew in his face. Is not China in danger of being left to the fate which her ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... gathered in Snapshot Harry's eyes which at last overspread his whole face, and finally shook his frame as he sat helplessly down again. Then, wiping his eyes, he said in a shaky voice:— ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... had left him flinging himself into his arms in the face of chastisement. For the moment Hilary Vane, under this traitorous influence, was unable to speak. But he let the hand rest on his shoulder, and at length was able to pronounce, in a shamefully shaky voice, the name of his son. Whereupon Austen seized him by the other shoulder and turned him round and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill |
