"Jerky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... inside this jerky to-night?" said somebody, as I climbed the wheel. "Well, we'll give thanks for not havin' eight," he added cheerfully. "Clamp your mind on to that, Shorty." And he slapped the shoulder of his neighbor. Naturally I took these ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... they wer'n't contented until some one invented A sort o' jerky tape-line clock, to help on wasteful ways. An' that infernal ticker spends money fur 'em quicker Than any neighbourhood o' men in ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the land, Eben left the boat and made his way slowly up the track. Reaching the main highway, he moved forward with a long jerky stride until he came to the little clearing where the Dobbins' shack was situated. He stopped and peered cautiously around. A light shone from the one window facing the road, and toward this Eben stealthily moved. There was no blind to the window, so when near enough he could easily see all that ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... must move continuously, in a somewhat jerky fashion, inside the dark light-tight camera, and behind the lens. As each picture, showing some particular motion, is taken, the film halts for the briefest space of time, and then goes on, to be wound up in the box, and a new portion brought before ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... eloquent), with a thin 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
... 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
... Dorking Hen, as she strutted around the poultry-yard. She held her head very high, and paused every few minutes to look around in her jerky way and see whether the other fowls were listening. Once she even stood on her left foot right in the pathway of the Shanghai Cock, and cackled into his ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... in little, sharp, jerky outbursts, and it seemed to me that to speak at all was very painful to him, and that his will all through ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... conscious before the eyes of the men, all of whom he knew by sight or by name, and not one of whom he had ever met before. But they all shook hands after it was over, and the assistant organist played the Wedding March, and one of the club men insisted in pulling a cheerful and jerky peal on the church bell in the absence of the janitor, and then Van Bibber hurled an old shoe and a handful of rice—which he had thoughtfully collected from the chef at the club—after them as they drove off ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... the Maine woods. Now he was foreman of an East River lumber-yard, and he was prospering. In a year or two he would have enough laid by to go home to Bucksport and buy a share in a ship-building business. All this dribbled out in the course of a jerky but variegated correspondence, in which autobiographic details were mixed with reflections moral ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... bidden her coachman drive fast, and while the horses trotted rapidly along the Rue Royale and the boulevards, she told what had happened to Nana in jerky, breathless sentences. ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... the wood, other shells whistled by, but none of them near enough to set our nerves tingling again. Indeed the state of mind of both of us seemed sanguine and rose-coloured. "Fine bit of country this," said the major in his quick jerky way, "and that purple haze is quite beautiful. It ought to be lighter than this. It's not even half morning light yet.... My old uncle in County Clare would be sure to call it dusk. He often used to say when we were arranging a day's fishing, 'Let me see, it will ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... to—exactly." They first met, it seems, in saddle. The winter weather was glorious at Averill. They had a fine pack of hounds; coursing for jack-rabbit was their favorite sport, and, despite the fact that Foster had a beautiful and speedy horse, "his seat was so poor and his hand so jerky he never managed to get up ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... 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 and tied by ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... whole; to connect, to introduce them; to blow them out or expand them; to carry them to a close." Buffon attached the greatest importance to sequence, to close dependence, to continuous enchainment. He detested a chopped, jerky style, that into which the French are prone to fall. Certain it is, and from obvious causes, that much of the secret of style lies in aptness of sequence, thought and word, through an irresistible impulsion and pertinence, leaping forth nimbly, each taking its place promptly, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... 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 ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... This jerky shift of position, on the part of the foe, spoiled Bruce's aim. His fearful jaws snapped together harmlessly in empty air at a spot where, a fraction of a second earlier, the other's throat had been. Down crashed the disguised man. And atop of him the furious dog hurled ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... room was in an uproar, men grabbing rifles and running out to get their horses, for it was plain to be seen that there was hard work to be done, and quickly. Questions, threats, curses filled the air, those who remained inside to get the story listening intently to the jerky narrative; those outside, caring less for the facts of an action past than for the action to come, shouted impatiently for a start to be made, even threatening to go on and tackle the proposition by themselves if there were not more haste. Hopalong told ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... two Dick saw a long, snake-like head and neck thrust out of the water by the bank. The head twisted about with a quick, jerky motion till the bird's eyes rested on the canoe, when it disappeared as suddenly as it ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... craft began to move over the surface, in a jerky, lurching fashion which indicated a very rough piece of ground. At the same time a queer, leathery squeaking came to the engineer's borrowed ears; he concluded that the machine was being sorely strained by the motion. At the time he was puzzled to ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... wearing no hat, but a black silk or a white silk scarf, passed slowly along the little road just below the ridge. None looked up to see Aaron sitting there alone. From some hidden place somebody was playing an accordion, a jerky sound in the still afternoon. And away beyond lay the unchanging, mysterious valley, and the infolding, mysterious hills ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... lot," I replied, and walked forrard to Jacobs's bunk. Some time before, he had rigged up a pair of curtains, cut out of an old sack, to keep off the draught. These, some one had drawn, so that I had to pull them aside to see him. He was lying on his back, breathing in a queer, jerky fashion. I could not see his face, plainly; but it seemed rather ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson
... glared he pondered the words of advice offered by the old man with the twisted leg who sat upon Burrage's counter and punctuated his remarks with quick, jerky stabs of his stout, ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... 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 rigidity ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... a snort, opened the locker in the bows, and then began to toss out the water like a jerky cascade, Max watching him wildly, but, to his great relief, seeing the ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... lightheartedness of the start in early spring was gone. By this time the spare spaces in the wagons were kept filled with meat, for always there were buffalo now. Lines along the sides of the wagons held loads of rudely made jerky—pieces of meat slightly salted and exposed to the clear dry air ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... for the sanitary supervision of 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
... goose the Whistle,'" said the musician seriously, and at once struck up a jerky Frankish tune, with eyes intently fixed on the Emir, garnering his every smile and sign of pleasure. When his Honour showed a disposition to sing the words of the refrain, he played more loudly than before in triumph. All present ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... country hawbuck," 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 since. Well, and what's brought you up—don't answer, I know all about it. ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... Mr. Roberts, "ye know nothin' of love, Mister Bobo, an' ye never will. I'm sorry for ye, too. Life without love is like eatin' bull-beef jerky without salsa!" ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... we obeyed all orders with as good grace as we obey the Little Mother's what models we'd be," was Jean Paul's jerky comment as he struggled into an overcoat, his eyes still fixed upon ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... come, and lets bygones be bygones, that get the good checks at the end of the week. Some of them fight more 'n they work, but I guess you won't be that kind," she concluded, with an unctuous smile, displaying two rows of false teeth. Then, with a quick, nervous, jerky gait, she hopped up the flight of rough plank stairs, threw open a door, and ushered me into the bedlam noises of the "loft," where, amid the roar of machinery and the hum of innumerable voices, I was to ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... with a jerky motion and downed the contents; the chaser stood disregarded before him and O'Brien regarded his patron ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... began, and the old nervous, jerky manner showed itself again, momentarily,—"remember that... I left Paris by ... the first train, this morning, and have simply been... traveling right up to the ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... poles. The floor was of pine boards, and had once been a marvel of beauty and convenience for a mountain cabin; but time had played strange pranks with it, till now it was uneven and sloped off in a jerky fashion toward the back door. On one wall was fastened a rude set of shelves, on which was perched a motley collection of pickle bottles and tin cans. Stretched along one wall stood a crude, home-made table, and in one corner stood the remains of a little, old-fashioned ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... a short, round-bodied, thin-legged little man, with a jerky quality in his motions; he had seen fit to clothe his extraordinary mind in a cricket cap, an overcoat, and cycling knickerbockers and stockings. Why he did so I do not know, for he never cycled and he never played cricket. It was a fortuitous ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... the shadow of the tree, took off his hat with a flourish and bowed. Then as she made no answer to these salutations, but only searched him with her grey eyes, he began to speak in jerky sentences. ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... Jerky, little by little, Wilfred sketches out the answer. Army life wasn't what he'd expected. Not at all. He was sore on the whole business. He'd been let in for it, that was all. It wasn't so bad for some of the fellows, but they'd been lucky. As for him—well, he'd come here ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... from the description. A middle-aged lady with a brown skin, black hair and dark eyes, an oval face, fairly good-looking, her manner lively and attractive, her movements quick without being abrupt or jerky. She was highly intelligent and a good talker, with more to say than most women, and better able than most to express herself. We were at the same small table and got on well together, as I am a good listener and she knew— being a ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... liked his Church music as good as you like, but lively at all costs, and the royal mind speedily wearying of all things in turn, he wished the numbers that made up an anthem to be short. So Purcell wasted his time and magnificent thematic material on mere strings of scrappy, jerky sections. The true Purcell touch is on them all, but no sooner has one entered fairly into the spirit of a passage than it is finished. Instrumental interludes—if, indeed, they can be called interludes, for they are as important as the vocal sections—abound, and might almost be curtain-tunes ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... mounted on rockers like a cradle. Over the back end was a sieve or hopper, and immediately beneath slanted a frame covered with blanket cloth. The pay-dirt was to be poured into the hopper and running water turned in on it. While the cradle was rocked with a jerky movement the sand sifted down through the hopper to the slanting apron. Much of the gold, Boreland explained, would be caught in the nap of the apron, and in the little sag at the bottom of it, but the sand would flow on out over the bottom ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... with a yell of pain, and they fell into the dust and dragged. The horse broke into a bunchy, jerky gallop, and lunged down the hill, the big van swaying wildly with an ominous rattling and ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... 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
... of water in turning a waterwheel." He recommended, incidentally, that a Boulton and Watt steam engine be used to pump water to supply the waterwheel.[7] Smeaton had thought of a flywheel, but he reasoned that a flywheel large enough to smooth out the halting, jerky operation of the steam engines that he had observed would be more of an encumbrance than a pump, ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... steam engine; or an electrical apparatus; or a clock; or a sewing machine; or anything for spinning, carding, or weaving—nothing that is adapted to any useful labor. These heavy weights, that have fallen on the floor, would give the works a kind of jerky motion for a few seconds, while the weights were descending. Nothing more. But the ultimate purpose of the machine is ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... group included 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
... a woman given to jerky conversations, interspersed with exclamation points. Her poise and balance had become a proverb in the business world. Yet her lips were trembling now. Her eyes were very round and bright. Her face had flushed, then grown white. Her voice shook a little. "Yes, of course I am. ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... him. One seared his thigh. Owing, however, either to sheer good fortune or to his jerky ascent, he reached the top of the ladder without a ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... he went to a cupboard, opened it, and picked out a bottle which he brought forth. He moved and did everything in jerky gestures, always incomplete; he never quite stretched out his arm, nor quite put out his legs; nor made any broad and definite movements. His ideas seemed to be like his actions; he suggested them, promised them, sketched them, hinted at them, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... 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." Such an ending ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... 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 an end to him ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and, on the stage, the Roofers were glittering with gold and silver and their boyish voices came in gusts, punctuated by the jerky flights of ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... Her method was a bit jerky, perhaps, and lacked grace; but she was going straight down the stretch to the "home" stake, and before they had covered half the distance Nancy passed Carrie, and ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... made into a refreshing drink. Only a small amount of sugar and salt can be carried. This fare is augmented by mushrooms, wild fruit and berries and fish. Watercress is a refreshing addition and a good Scout knows where to find it. Some hardened climbers add a little "jerky" (dried meats) ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... In a jerky, strained voice he told of his mailing a letter, from a village within a short distance of Bug Hollow, to a girl friend of his on the afternoon of the night of the robbery. He swore positively that this letter was in this same mail-bag, ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... 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 principles which ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... very red in the face and floundered, amid his jerky sentences, like a newly-landed fish, but he stuck to it manfully. I could not help admiring the young fellow. He was so young and handsome and so honest and boyishly eager in his embarrassment. I admired him—yes, but I hated him, ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... 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, ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... black prairie rat with a short tail and lives in colonies of from one to two hundred. He is interesting and unique as the most skilful farmer among the animals in his preparation of his winter supply of fodder. During the weeks when the grass is most succulent he actually mows it down with swift jerky swings of his head, cutting about twenty or thirty stalks with his sharp long front teeth. Then he allows his grass to cure and later puts up his prepared hay in a most scientific manner. First he makes a mound about ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... 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 another by the driver twitching the rein and shouting. There ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... slackened rein with one hand, his rider managed to secure her leaping cap with the other; and after the first bounce, she caught the jerky gait instinctively and swayed her body into its uneven swing. But her heart was all at once a-throb in a wild panic. Was this what a boy must expect? This challenging brutal downrightness, which made one seem to have become ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... 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 ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... a short, jerky nod for nearly every word, and describing a circle round his crown—as if he were stirring a pint of hot tea—with his forefinger, at the end of ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... stick the pitcher back and give a fellow a chance?" he thought, eying uneasily the quick, jerky preparations. "Why, at this distance a ball could go ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... 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 of ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... around the platform—a solid phalanx of them on the slope above. They were heavily armed. Other masked men stood on the platform. They seemed rigid figures—stiff, jerky when they moved. How different from the ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... must 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 subconscious ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... cleared. "You've left your outfit somewhere back on the trail," he said eagerly. "I'll go back with you; and we can talk things over quietly there!" He actually started toward the watercourse, walking with jerky, ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... long stroke, using the full blade of the saw. Don't acquire the "jerky" style of sawing. If the handle is held loosely, and the saw is at the proper angle, the weight of the saw, together with the placement of the handle on the saw blade, will be found sufficient to make the requisite ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... 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. ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... more and more jerky, even incoherent; evidently the material had not even now been fully reduced ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... the coils of her hair shining black as a crow's wing in the sun. Her 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 ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... 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
... Julian Hawthorne's "Love—or a Name," finds himself, at first presentation, on his way to offer marriage to Miss Nell Anthony, who has just been left motherless, and to whom he feels that he owes this manly tribute. He acquits his conscience of this duty, but performs it nevertheless in such a jerky, unlover-like fashion that few young women, certainly not one of Miss Anthony's force of character, could have been imposed upon. "I thought you l-loved me," said he. Which surely is not the way to win a fair lady. Much to his comfort, as well as to his ingenuous surprise, he is refused, and goes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... at the same time pale, a thing which always displeases me and which is, in fact, unpleasant; it impresses me as a sort of diseased healthfulness. Moreover, he had the slow yet jerky way of speaking that characterizes the pedant. Even his manner of walking, which was not that of youth and health, repelled me; as for his glance, it might be said that he had none. I do not know what to think of a man whose eyes have nothing to say. These are the signs which led me to an unfavorable ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... had come to live with them Mr. and Mrs. Moreen suddenly gave up the villa at Nice. Pemberton had got used to suddenness, having seen it practised on a considerable scale during two jerky little tours—one in Switzerland the first summer, and the other late in the winter, when they all ran down to Florence and then, at the end of ten days, liking it much less than they had intended, straggled back in mysterious depression. They had returned to Nice "for ever," as they said; ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... up regularly every day to inquire how his son was faring on the road to the next world," said Robert, laughing. "He's tough old English oak. I'm just to him what I appear at the time. It's better having him like that than one of your jerky fathers, who seem to belong to the stage of a theatre. Everybody respects my old dad, and I can laugh at what he thinks of me. I've only to let him know I've served an apprenticeship in farming, and can make use ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 is the ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... the "Sphinx" drew his hard, glittering, mineralogical flavour. The verse is not so much easy as facile. And not all the grace of internals can atone for external monotony. That trick—that full stop at the end of nearly every fourth line—it impairs the charm of the music and renders its flow jerky; coming, as it does, like an ever-repeated blow, it grows wearisome to the ear, ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... and seemingly on slightly higher ground, a light was shining, and a second light moved with a curious jerky motion and then disappeared. ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... 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 realised how hard it had set, then, at that instant, a white shape lurched forward and swooped ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... you so sure," said Sophronia, in a jerky fashion, accompanying the attempt to draw her foot into the ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... friend who had recently 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... first rather confused, gradually separated themselves into two varieties, one the sharp, irregular rattle of a springless cart, the second a hoarse unmusical voice which, like Edgar's, was raised in song. But in this case the rattle of the cart caused the song to be broken unexpectedly into jerky spasms, so to speak. Nevertheless, the singer ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Henri was at home, still scrubbing and cleaning. The front of the great house was in order, with even the fires laid on all the hearths ready for lighting. Now he was scrubbing the back stairs. His brush bumped noisily against the steps, and the sound of its scouring was nearly drowned by the jerky tune which the old fellow sung through his nose ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston
... that he heard a rumpus that shot him erect, and sent his extraordinarily conspicuous orange dagger of a beak darting from side to side in that jerky way of listening that ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... the head 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 ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... Macquarrie, who was correcting long slips of printer's proofs at a desk by the window, came forward and welcomed him. Glory held his hand with her long hand-clasp and looked steadfastly into his eyes. His face twitched and her own blushed deeply, and then she talked in a nervous and jerky way, reproaching him for his neglect ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... got is meat," Bill told her, "except a little jerky; but there's plenty of that in the woods if we can just find it. And I don't intend to delay about that. If the snow gets much deeper, we'd have to have ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... and without selection, he knocked violently at any house that he happened to pass. His blows, on which he was expending his last energies, were jerky and without aim; now ceasing altogether for a time, now renewed as if in irritation. It was the violence of his fever ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... in his jerky way. "Good employer—model to follow—great man. Watch him, mark him, imitate him—that's the way to get on. Can't go wrong," and he trotted down the street in search of fresh contributions towards his ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the jollification a hush began to spread over the room. It began at the tables near the main entrance of the restaurant; then the men began to get briskly to their feet. With automatic precision they came to attention, saluting the officer who had entered with that jerky little downward gesture of the forearm typical of ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... without appearing to do so. He saw Barker flush slightly, and did not miss the jerky nervousness of his answer—that ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... He began a jerky, broken conversation that lasted until they reached the station, and left her puzzled at its drift and meaning. She quickened her pace, and so did he, talking at her slightly averted ear. She made lumpish and inadequate interruptions rather than replies. At times he seemed to be claiming pity ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... with his eyes cast down, gave me the whole story of the Heemskirk episode in Freya's words; then went on in his rather jerky utterance, and looking ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... 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" ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... 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 beat (see pages 23 and 24) the movement comes ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... Ditton across the heath, so bleak and wretched in December, was a daily delight now the sun was glinting over the sea and the gorse was in bud, and the stonechats, which had vanished during the cold weather, were back among the boulders, darting from stone to stone in short, jerky flight, with that sharp, jarring cry which is the prelude to their sweeter spring note. The moorland air at 8 a.m. was so fresh and pure and exhilarating that it seemed to blow away all the cobwebs, and Gwen often felt inclined to dance along the ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... Arundel, that—that—of—this," Hudson began in a dry, jerky whisper. "Believe me, I wouldn't 'a' thought of intrudin'. I ordered the picture there from your father a fortnight ago, and this was the day I was to come and give it a last looking-over before I came through with the cash, ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... restraint Rules them relentlessly; smiles forced and faint And joyless facial spasms Their meetings and their mutterings attend. Jerky approximations quickly end ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... know you," Jack broke in with a jerky bow. "Your daughter's a smart gal," he said. "She made everything as clear as daylight t' me. I'm goin' on with ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... that punctuated his jerky periods he paused by a little table on which lay a portfolio, and lifting it idly looked at the sketches it contained. With a sudden look of apprehension Gillian started and made a half movement as if to rise, then with a shrug she sank back ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... fixed upon him, watching for the least word, the least modulation of the voice. The curiosity-dealer was now laughing, with a nervous laugh, while resuming the self-control of a man who feels sure of himself: and he walked up to Rnine with jerky movements that revealed ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... reflected that Warde seemed to be saturated with fresh air and all the sweet, clean things which one associates with mountains. "He loves hills," thought John, "and he loves our Hill." Warde began to speak in his jerky, confidential tones. Dirty Dick had always been insufferably ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... launch sounded a series of sharp, jerky calls, followed by the firing of a Mauser bullet. Venning's heart was pumping blood at express speed under the violence of his efforts, and his eyes in a wild stare were fixed on the approaching craft, which had now brought its living ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... if he were placing himself under a tremendous obligation to her, by making her go to so much trouble; and, after assuring the others that she would not be long, followed Denis with that jerky mutinous gait in which each footfall is an angry stamp;—it is characteristic of women all the world over, when they are induced to do something of which they disapprove. For she was wondering where Lord Henry could be, ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... and Mr. Bullfinch were on their way to Rockville. Jerry had never ridden in Mr. Bullfinch's car before. It was not the car that was jerky, Jerry discovered, but Mr. Bullfinch. Still, he was a careful driver except when he got to talking. Then he seemed to forget his was not the only car on the road and the other cars honked at him. Yet Mr. Bullfinch was good at missing the other cars. At the very ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson
... under a mat of dirty, nondescript hair that was once undoubtedly a glorious tawny blond. The wide shoulders stooped, the back bent forward from the waist, and the hands, yet retaining hints of care, trembled at the ends of bony, jerky arms. And, in the half-light of the veranda, the sodden features smirked and grinned, scowled and leered, with an incessant twitching at the corners of the mouth that showed ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... up!" shouted the victim, in a jerky, spasmodic manner, as the words were helped out; "that ain't the right way to ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... so much that I did my best to enter into conversation with him, only to be baffled by the jerky embarrassment with which he met all advances, and when we got out at Esher, curiosity led me to keep him still ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... jerky voice, without seeking his words, which, on the contrary, seemed to crowd through the portal of his brain, he ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... 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 movements of a ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... There was Nekhludoff's old acquaintance, Vera Doukhova, with her large, frightened eyes, and the swollen vein on her forehead, in a grey jacket with short hair, and thinner and yellower than ever.. She had a newspaper spread out in front of her, and sat rolling cigarettes with a jerky movement of her hands. ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... ahead, and she saw its tail lights moving away with a pang of hopelessness. Then, before she realised what had happened, the big car ahead slowed and swung sideways, blocking the road, and the cab came to a jerky stop that flung her against the window. She saw two figures in the dim light of the taxi's head lamps, heard somebody speak, and the door was ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... 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 ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... warning Noreen nearly slipped off the pad at the sudden and jerky upheaval when the ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... manufactured of excellent but simple patterns. Metal work was, of course, thoroughly understood, and the Anglo-Saxon swords and knives discovered in barrows are of good construction. Every chief had also his minstrel, who sang the short and jerky Anglo-Saxon songs to the accompaniment of a harp. The dead were burnt and their ashes placed in tumuli in the north: the southern tribes buried their warriors in full military dress, and from their tombs much of the little knowledge ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... well with the retired terror of the mountains for a long time. The only fly in the ointment of his content was Jerky Johnson, who kept dogs and went pirooting around the hills with a gun, making much noise and scaring the wits out of coyotes and jack rabbits. Old Clubfoot realized that his eyes were dimming and his hearing becoming impaired, and it annoyed him to ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... burst out in a jerky, nervous fashion, "I—I came here on Wednesday—when you were out, and I—behaved badly—" She hesitated, broke down, looked at the door as though she would have dashed out through it, had it only been open, then in one rush poured out the words that had been ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... 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 so ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... littered about the square and heaped thick under the trees. The brick walls of many of the houses round were pitted and pocked and scarred by the shell fragments. The face of one house was marked by a huge splash, with solid center and a ragged-edged outline of radiating jerky rays, reminding one immediately of a famous ink-maker's advertisement. The bricks had taken the impression of the explosion's splash exactly as paper would take the ink's. Practically every window in the square had been broken, and in the case of the splash-marked house, blown in, sash and frame ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... the lieutenant in 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 mask of ...
— The Mightiest Man • Patrick Fahy
... with which the motorman ran the car, and the jerky way in which he stopped and started it, did not bother Nan Sherwood much, for she was not nervous. Miss March, however, began to stare ahead apprehensively, and the way in which she twisted her pocket-handkerchief in her hands as the car started ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... 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 than the crow blackbirds, for not ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... the paper across the table in silence. The room seemed to her to have grown very still. She could hear the flies buzzing on the panes, the soft purr of the wind about the low eaves and through the apple boughs, the jerky beating of her own heart. She felt frightened ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... told a story with a lowered voice, and in his usual jerky way. But the gap was easy to ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... fetches out for a good hard stroke. Then he's in a pickle to free his weapon again before one of the messy-looking devils takes advantage of his defenselessness. The way to do was to go at it very lightly, with a short jerky thrust. Then the blade ran in of itself, like a good horse—you actually had trouble holding it back. The most important thing was, not to take your eye off your enemy. You mustn't look at your bayonet, or the spot you intend to pierce. You must ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... 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
... dropped in to speak to her mother and her—fellows who didn't ever come down town, but I could tell they knew who I was by the way they ignored me. It exasperated me to a pitch of fury, that coldly insolent air of theirs—a jerky nod at me without so much as a glance, and no notice of me when they were leaving my box beyond a faint, supercilious smile as they passed with eyes straight ahead. I knew what it meant, what they were thinking—that ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips |
