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More "Jerk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... abundant grass and young willows that grew along the river banks. The meat, cut in small strips, or ribbons, was dried quickly in the hot sun. This was called "jirked" meat. Later on the word was corrupted into "jerked," and "jerked beef" is not unknown at the present day. The verb "jerk" is corrupted from the Chilian word, charqui, meaning sun-dried meat; but it is not easy to explain how the Chilian word got into ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... No new prize-fighter had arisen to wrest the championship of the world from John Sullivan, who had put all his old rivals 'to sleep.' 'Ole Man' Terrill proceeded to follow their example. He had been up late the night before at a poker game. His head fell forward with a jerk. Aroused by the shock, he glanced drowsily about him. Heat-waves danced before the open window. Deep silence hung over his little world. Again his eyelids closed; his head dropped, and slowly he ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... from the start. There was a broad stream in front of him, and a hill just on its other side. No one had ever tried to take this at a jump. It was considered more of a swim than anything else, and the hunters always crossed it by the bridge, towards the left. Travers saw the bridge and tried to jerk Satan's head in that direction; but Satan kept right on as straight as an express train over the prairie. Fences and trees and furrows passed by and under Travers like a panorama run by electricity, and he only breathed by accident. They went on at the stream and the hill ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... movements with the liveliest interest. He soon came within reach of the bait, turned over on his back to make a good dart at it, and in a second bacon and contents had disappeared. He had hooked himself now, as the tremendous jerk he gave the cable proved, and the sailors began to haul in the monster by means of tackle attached to the mainyard. He struggled desperately, but his captors were prepared for his violence, and had a long rope ready with a slip knot, which caught his ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... of dissent and disgust. "N-a-hr! Blenty ask it—no get 'em. Ebery morning tell that big fella Boss (with an upward jerk of the head) gib it daily-bread. Dinner-time tell it gib it daily-bread. One time more alonga tea tell it that big fella Boss gib ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... at Audierne, and came into the harbour at daybreak. Your part has been satisfactorily performed. You have brought your prisoner with all expedition. So—" here the Provincial raised the pen from the book with a jerk of his wrist and shrugged his shoulders almost imperceptibly, "so—you ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... it," I told her, looking out over the crap tables. "It's new, and different. But I'm not anybody's darling." A jerk of my head ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... lit a cigarette and threw the match in the grate, and Tarling roused himself from his reverie with a jerk. ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... was never under any circumstances expected to act as people thought she should act, so this occasion was no exception to the rule. She pushed Amy and Grace aside, glared at Betty, and sat up with a little jerk. ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... at the prisoner and in a trice had stripped him to the skin from the waist up. They tore his shirt to ribbons. A jerk of McIvor's hand brought a third man on the run, carrying a tin can. He began to smear the contents over the back and chest and arms of the shrieking prisoner. While the onlookers rocked with drunken laughter Red McIvor peeled bill after bill from the roll ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... was a series of poles and ropes - the turning pole, the hanging poles, the rings, and the trapeze, - on either or all of which the pupil could exercise himself; and, if he had the skill so to do, could jerk himself from one to the other, and finally hang himself upon the sloping ladder, before the momentum of his spring had ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... was a heavy step across the floor, the door swung open with a jerk, and a tall, raw-boned man, shaggy-bearded and shock haired, ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... exclamation of terror. Louis sat at the door of his dwelling, head erect and ears pricked, as coldly and defiantly inert as when they had put him into his execution chamber. Strudwarden dropped the kennel with a jerk, and stared for a long moment at the miracle-dog; then he went into a peal ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... embroidered cashmere, such as many ladies wore forty years ago in their walks abroad and such as no lady wears to-day. It had fallen half off the back of the wearer, but at the moment Biddy permitted herself to consider her she gave it a violent jerk and brought it up to her shoulders again, where she continued to arrange and settle it, with a good deal of jauntiness and elegance, while she listened to the talk of the gentleman. Biddy guessed that this little transaction took place very frequently, and was not unaware ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... thou couldst play, [17] Or rum-maunder in one day, And like an Abram-cove couldst pray, Yet pass with gybes well jerk'd away. ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... hall, and opened the door with a jerk. The suddenness of the movement was apparently not anticipated by the person outside, who, with one arm stretched feebly towards the receding knocker, tilted gently forward, and rested both hands on the threshold in an attitude which was probably common enough ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... over the moustache and the moustache went up under the nose. When nose and moustache had settled into their places again, Monsieur Rigaud loudly snapped his fingers half-a-dozen times; bending forward to jerk the snaps at Arthur, as if they were palpable missiles which he jerked into ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... prevailed all evening, and Oo-koo-hoo certainly had a store of information upon that subject. In expressing surprise that a wolf had strength enough to jerk about a big drag-log, as though it were merely a small stick, he replied that once when he had killed a full-grown bull-moose and dressed and hung up the meat, he had left for camp with part of his prize, but on returning again to the cache, he had found a wolf moving off with one of the ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... and Kid Wolf had fat Major Stover by the neck. For all his weight, and in spite of his bulk, The Kid handled him as if he had been a child. An upward jerk dragged him from his chair. The Texan held him by one ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... course of which Beowulf and Grendel, wrestling madly, overturn tables and couches, shaking the hall to its very foundations. Nevertheless, Beowulf clings so fast to the hand and arm he had grasped, that the monster, trying to free himself by a mighty jerk, tears his arm out of its socket and disappears, uttering a blood-curdling cry, and leaving this trophy in his foe's grasp. Mortally wounded, Grendel hastens back to his marsh, leaving a trail of blood behind him, while Beowulf, exhausted but triumphant, proudly exhibits the huge ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... a will, and the jerk disengaged the chaise, and they succeeded in hauling it safely to the shore, and placing it high and ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... Her whole nature seemed to be awaking and blooming with a new grace and meaning. Her soft eyes, which glanced at him in the glowing dusk, swam with tenderness and unconscious passion, and once she let her head rest upon his shoulder, when a violent jerk threw her toward him, and at last he encircled her with his arm and there they sat trembling together, she with she knew not what, and he very well knowing, ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... assent came from the sofa on which Peggy lay, choking no longer, but ghastly white, and drawing her breath in painful gasps. Mrs Asplin sniffed at the contents of the tumbler, only to jerk back her head with watery eyes and ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... neither trip nor fall, but you must be cautious with the horses of the Moslems, and treat them with kindness, for the horses of the Moslems are proud, and they like not being slaves. When they are young and first mounted, jerk not their mouths with your bit, for be sure if you do they will kill you; sooner or later, you will perish beneath their feet. Good are our horses; and good our riders, yea, very good are the Moslems ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... turned on more power, and the racing machine continued to move. Soon it was at the edge of the ditch, and then, with something of a jerk, it came up on the roadway, leaving a trail of dirty water and slimy mud ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... habit of toying, when she had no knitting or needlework. In the course of playing with it (we suggest) she tried to pull the knife out of its sheath; failed; held it up, so, point upward; pulled again; pulled harder—with a jerk, at last the sheath came off; the dagger sprang up; it wounded Clara fatally. Hugo, knowing that they had disagreed, knowing that the servants had heard, and seeing her fall suddenly dead before him, was seized with horror—the Le Geyt impulsiveness!—lost ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... urged Mrs. Hawtry. And Cecelia Anne obediently began, with a jerk of a curtsey and a shake of her delicate embroideries and ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... Dayton, Washington, one summer morning about 4:30," said he. "Another one of the boys—a big, strong, good-natured comrade— until then a stranger to me—and myself were the only ones left at the little depot when the jerk-water train pulled away. It was the first trip to this town for both of us. There was no 'bus at the depot and we did not know just how to get up to the hotel. The morning was fine —such a one as makes a fellow feel ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... in hand and make you a little ray of sunshine about the home. I know your type backwards. I've been in America and studied it on its native asphalt. You superfatted millionaire kids are all the same. If Dad doesn't jerk you into the office before you're out of knickerbockers, you just run to seed. You get to think you're the only thing on earth, and you go on thinking it till one day somebody comes along and shows you you're not, and then you get what's coming ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... that bib-towel. Those pointed whiskers approaching her cheek. The little pink bow at her neck. Those liverlike lips. That soft, boneless hand at the back of her neck had jerked out the bag! O God! that soft, slimy kiss and the little jerk of the bow at the back of her neck! and fell down with a screaming ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... music. Far over dead London resounded our message of comradeship and hope to any fellow-man surviving. It cheered our own hearts, that strong, metallic call, and we turned the more earnestly to our work, dragged two feet off the earth with each upward jerk of the rope, but all straining together on the downward heave, Challenger the lowest of all, bending all his great strength to the task and flopping up and down like a monstrous bull-frog, croaking with every pull. It was at that moment that an artist might have taken a picture of the four adventurers, ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... closed around Sure-shot, who appeared to be expostulating with the chief—as if offering some explanation of his failure. I did not wait to witness the denouement. Raising my elbow, and giving my arm a quick jerk, I heard the thong snapping asunder; and saw the broken ends spring out from their folds. Another wrench set my right arm free; and then, clutching the loosened coils, I unwound them with as much rapidity, as if I had been freeing myself from the embrace of a serpent! Not one of the Indians ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... Edith in mingled fear and excitement, as, at each successive "oh!" she received a jerk that well-nigh ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... thought, or product of imagination. But to proceed from wit, in the general notion of it, to the proper wit of an heroic or historical poem; I judge it chiefly to consist in the delightful imaging of persons, actions, passions, or things. It is not the jerk or sting of an epigram, nor the seeming contradiction of a poor antithesis (the delight of an ill-judging audience in a play of rhyme) nor the jingle of a more poor Paronomasia; neither is it so much the morality of a grave sentence, affected by Lucan, but more ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... growled. "The local from Europe appears to have arrived." He gathered in his reins with an almost vicious jerk which brought the bay's head up ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... to Sir Palmes Fairborne, the Lieutenant-Governor. Scrope took a turn or two across the room while the Major was writing the news which Knightley had brought. Then—"What game is this he's playing?" he said, with a jerk of his head to the door by which Knightley had gone out. "I have no mind to be ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... reins and woke the sleepy mules with a vigorous jerk. "Nary a drink, Doc; nary a drink. Thank you kindly all the same. Got t' mosey 'long t' th' still now; ought t' o' been there hour ago. 'f I can do anything fer you, jest le' me know. I live over on Sow Coon Gap, when I'm 't home. ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... out, and it was a great help to the space on the moon. Of course none of them could come back to tell how it was there, or draw back once he got started through Grandpaw's spring-closing, one-way door. One long, thin rabbit called Snoop, who was always trying to see everything in advance, tried to jerk back after he got his head through, but Grandpaw's door caught him just back of the ears, and he decided to go on in. I don't know what my eighty-second great-grandfather saw when he took that first look. He didn't say. Grandpaw didn't join the sky procession himself, because ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... of feet to and fro:—then, the sudden pause in all these sounds; the shrill whistle, betokening all was ready; the converting of all the employes into animated sign-posts, that waved their arms wildly; the grunt and wheeze from the engine, as if from a giant in pain; the sharp jerk, and then the steady pull at the carriage in which I was sitting; the "pant, pant! puff, puff!" of the iron horse, as he buckled to his work with a will; and then, finally, the preliminary oscillation ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... himself as well as his horses in these wild regions of the west. The explorer indeed should be possessed of a good few accomplishments—amongst these I may enumerate that he should be able to make a pie, shoe himself or his horse, jerk a doggerel verse or two, not for himself, but simply for the benefit or annoyance of others, and not necessarily for publication, nor as a guarantee of good faith; he must be able to take, and make, an observation now and again, mend a watch, kill or cure a horse as the times ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... need not have given him another thought; subtly altered, she was bound to probe into the how and why. He sat beside her on the old-fashioned couch with a curled head, and his thirteen stone descending heavily on the springs sent up her light weight with a perceptible jerk. ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... had "patronized home industries"—a phrase I had just discovered with pride in our local paper. The bass was nodding and letting his hymn book slip toward a fall. I hoped slily that it would fall, and braced my nerves for the crash. But he woke with a funny jerk, like my jack-in-the-box, just in time to catch it, and began listening intently to the sermon as if he had been awake all the while. The soprano smiled at someone in the congregation, whispered to the tenor, and then ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... sudden jerk that could mean but one thing. Marjorie cast a fleeting glance at Miss Merton. The teacher was frowning angrily, as though about to deliver a rebuke. Luckily for the two girls, the first recitation bell rang and they stood not upon the order of their going, but went with alacrity. ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... blinked among them, and already the nipping air was filled with sounds of activity. Then the locomotive shrieked and he turned his face toward the lonely white hills as the cars moved forward with a jerk. It was bitterly cold, though he lay down out of the wind behind the load of rails, where hot cinders rattled about him and now and ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... at the windlass obeyed. The irresistible steam-winch caused the huge chain to grind and jerk in its iron pulley, and the enormous globular iron buoy came quietly over the side, black here and brown there, and red-rusted elsewhere; its green beard of sea-weed dripping with brine, and its sides grizzled with a six-months' growth of barnacles ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... Shoni, with a jerk of his thumb towards Valmai, "to put on her best frock, but no!" and he clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, "there's odd things woman are! ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... rocking your self backwards in your chair while talking or sitting. Stop biting your nails, chewing your moustaches, rolling your tongue in your mouth or any other unnecessary movement such as may have become "second nature" with you while studying, reading or writing. Never twitch or jerk your body. Never wink your eyes or look blank. Train yourself to stand sudden and loud noises with equanimity and composure. Such things betray lack of control. Do not let anything outside (or even within you) disturb your composure. When engaged in conversation let ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... probable contingency. He had brought down a pair of handcuffs as well as a sufficient supply of Somnol. My own deed of violence was the one entirely unforeseen effect, and Raffles vowed it had been a help. But when I inquired whether he had ever been over this empty house before, an irritable jerk of his cigarette ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... advanced to enter Dutch House, shadows appeared on the ground glass of the side door; and opening with a jerk, it let out a gush of fetid air together with Respectability on the prowl—Respectability incognito, sly, furtive of ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... quiet it looked dead beside the ruddy faces of the three old men; dead and very quietly, very softly decomposing into bleached purple and sallow white. Then her gaiety would come popping up again and jerk ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... around," went on Sam, and gave the tie a jerk, first one way and another. Then he began to tie it, shoving Aleck ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... of the hated buggy, he plunged and charged, frothing like a mad dog, running backward, trying to jerk the collar over his head, rolling over and over in his frantic struggles. Not until people were grouped above him did he grow quiet. Then when his former mistress stooped down and petted him, he begged her with his eyes as he had begged ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... a moment pronounced "All right! Move on!" elucidating the remark by a jerk at the coat-collar of the unsuspecting Sam, which sent him whirling up the road at a fine but uncomfortable rate ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... The growl rose in the throat with the culmination of each forward-pushing movement, and ebbed down to start up afresh with the beginning of the next movement. The end of each movement was the accent of the rhythm, the movement ending abruptly and the growling rising with a jerk. ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... "Jerk up your leg! that feller's a going to take one of your feet along with him, if he kin!" cried Sneak. Joe saw the wolf charging upon him, but he was altogether unable to avoid it in the manner he had done before. It was now only a few feet distant, its mouth open, displaying ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... myself right near the back door; then when I strike a light you fellows come in and swirl round the shack like a gust o' hell. The old devil will come out the back door to see what's doin', and I'll jerk him end-wise before he can touch trigger. I won't hurt him any more than he needs. Now don't stir till I'm ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... provoking sloth, after the smartly executed movements already described, Number Seven dug his oar deeply into the water, making up somewhat for his tardiness by the fierceness of the movement. The nose of the boat turned outwards almost with a jerk, and the craft slid in close to and parallel with ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... gathered the puppy up into his arms with a jerk—it was impossible to lead him any distance—and plunged out of the house. He gave two or three little choking sobs as he hurried along. It was a hot day, and he was tired and disappointed and discouraged. He had walked three ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... member of the family; noticing the sounds of the street, including the sparrow broils on the porch-roof; in fact, extremely wide-awake and observing. To the goldfinch's song he gave attention, standing motionless except for a slight nervous jerk of one wing, looking and listening as intently as though studying the notes for future use. The freedom of the birds in the room surprised him, as he showed plainly by the eager glances with which he followed every movement and marked each act. Upon joining the party of the free, he ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... time he had lost through his astonishment at the discovery, he wheeled his horse about with so sharp a jerk that it almost brought the animal upon its haunches; then started in mad pursuit of the girl, shouting at the top of his voice to Bernardine to saw hard on both ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... the slices along the bone in a saddle of mutton. In cutting a joint of meat, the strong fork is used to steady it; but in carving poultry it is the fork which is most useful in removing the wing and leg by a jerk, without leaving any ragged remains adhering to the body. All this must be accomplished by dexterity, not by strength, and any lady may acquire the art by a ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... blood in Kitty Fagan's heart gave a leap. The stout muscles gave an involuntary jerk. The substantial frame felt the thrill all through, and the rickety stool on which she was standing creaked sharply ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... vague soul it carried a purpose in life, knowledge that there was such a thing as service in the world. Daily his face now was new-reaped, his hands made clean. He imitated the erectness and alertness of these young soldiers whom he saw, learned the jerk of the elbow in their smart salute. Enriched by a pair of cast-off breeches, and the worn leggins thereto, he rode now with both feet in the stirrups and looked square between his horse's ears. Strong as are many lazy men, not cowardly, and therefore ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... vanished, sinking, as it were, into the earth. He had come upon one of the deep ravines that everywhere intersect these prairies. In an instant the rough head of his horse stretched upward from the edge and the rider and steed came scrambling out, and hounded up to us; a sudden jerk of the rein brought the wild panting horse to a full stop. Then followed the needful formality of shaking hands. I forget our visitor's name. He was a young fellow, of no note in his nation; yet in his person and equipments he was a good specimen of a Dakota warrior in his ordinary ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... sweet summer scents stole in at the window,—the breath of the cinnamon rose, of growing, grass and good brown earth. Mrs. Pettis pondered, looking vacantly before her, and Old Lady Lamson knit hastily on. Her needles clicked together, and she turned her work with a jerk in beginning a row. But neither was oppressed by lack of speech. They understood each other, and no more thought of "making talk" than of pulling up a seed to learn whether it had germinated. It was Mrs. Pettis who, after, a natural ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... time before she felt a jerk at the line. Her arms straightened out, and she pressed her lips tightly together. ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... head gave another nervous jerk in the direction of the door. She had heard a footstep coming upstairs, which was ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... for another long instant, facing each other. It was plain that every muscle in Strann's body was growing tense; the very smile was frozen on his lips. When he moved, at last, it was a convulsive jerk of his arm, and it was said, afterward, that his gun was all clear of the leather before the calm stranger stirred. No eye followed what happened. Can the eye follow such speed as the cracking lash of ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... A jerk, and Quijada had stripped the ruff from his neck, and, as this did not suffice, he cut with his sword blade and his teeth a piece of fine linen from ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to contrive a trap with but the cotton rope and the safety-pin, but the safety-pin like Mohammed's Allah, "made all things possible." I stuck that safety-pin in the woodwork and hung the noose in such position that the least jerk would bring it down over an intruding head—practised the stunt for ten or fifteen minutes, and then got well back against the wall with the end of the line in ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... remaining unanswered, he knocked more sharply. Then he heard from within the muffled creak of a bed, heavy steps across the floor. The door opened with a jerk; Gerald stood there, eyes swollen, hair in disorder, his collar crushed, and the white evening tie unknotted and dangling ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... With a thumb jerk toward the beating engine, Bob took up again his story. "Got a bunch of thugs over there right now ready for business if necessary. Imported plug-uglies and genuwine blown-in-the-bottle home talent. Shorty's still one of the gang, and our old friend Dug Doble is boss of the rodeo. I'm lookin' ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... two, no more. The man slipped the end of his stick under the sash and prised it up quietly. Next he raised himself on tiptoe, and thrust the stick a foot or so through the opening; worked it slowly along the window-ledge, and hesitated; then pulled with a light jerk, as an angler strikes a fish. And Hester, holding her breath, saw the stick withdrawn, inch by inch; and at the end of ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... village, and as they entered, he experienced that curious feeling of apprehensive expectancy with which one approaches the spot where one is to live and work for some time to come. The car slowed up to pass some carts on the road, and started forward with such a jerk that Talbot was precipitated from the back of the machine into the road. He picked himself up, covered with mud. The solemn face of the driver did not lessen his discomfiture. Here was a strange village, strange men, and ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... the brake on the line tightened, the boat began to tear through the water, still requiring the paying out of the rope. For an instant it slackened and the winch reeled in a little line. There was a sudden jerk and then the line fell slack. Working like demons, the men made the winch handles fairly fly as the line came in, and within another minute the whale spouted, blowing strongly and sounding again. He sulked at the bottom for over twenty minutes, coming ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... sharks, as it is well known that their malevolent impulses are more likely to be excited and their attacks directed against white objects than any other. His idea was that a shark attacking the white handkerchief would jerk the cord and thus give warning of its presence in the rear, in time for him to be ready with his ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... back with a kind of jerk. It was as though he realized abruptly that he had said too much—had overdone it. He took his companion by the arm and led ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... fell with a curious whistling crackling noise, tightening against the fisherman's foot; and the knot would have jumped off but for his precaution. Then it stopped with a jerk, and Josh ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... looked her straight in the face and said 'I—' Then his eyes shifted. He brought them back to Old Mother Nature's face with a jerk and began again. 'I promise—' Once more his eyes shifted. Then he gave up and sneaked away into the darkest shadows he could find. You see, he couldn't look Old Mother Nature in the face and tell a lie, and that was just what he had been ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... was of no use; still the little vehicle rushed on with the quickness of the wind. He then cried as loud as he could, but no one heard him; the snow drifted and the sledge flew on, and sometimes it gave a jerk as though they were driving over hedges and ditches. He was quite frightened, and he tried to repeat the Lord's Prayer; but all he could do, he was only able to remember the ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... lynchers let go of their victim the fingers of the half dead logger clung convulsively to the planking of the bridge. A business man stamped on them with a curse until the grip was broken. There was a swishing sound; then a sudden crunching jerk and the rope tied to the girder began to writhe and twist like a live thing. This lasted but a short time. The lynchers peered over the railing into the darkness. Then they slowly pulled up the dead body, attached a longer rope and repeated the performance. This ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... carpenter once more went below to sound the well. He shortly returned with even a worse report than the first. The order was therefore given to cut away the masts. He sprang to his post at the mizen-mast, which was to go first; but, just as he was about to cut, the ship righted with a sudden jerk, which well-nigh sent everybody off his legs. All believed that the dreaded resource would not be required, but still the helm was useless, and therefore the ship could not be got before the wind. Not ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... me some more for this," he stated as she tried to jerk loose and failed, "but that yelping windmill is your fond guardian, and he probably thinks I ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... idea. I wound the thread around him a few times, and he broke it with a single jerk. Then I wound the thread around and around, and by and ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... lay the crab-stick over the shoulders of the speaker: but the latter was as prompt as he was fearless. Before Hinkley could conceive his intention, he had leaped over the still unconscious person of William, and, flinging the old man round with a sudden jerk, had grasped and wrested the stick from his hands with a degree of activity and strength which confounded all the bystanders, and the subject of his sudden exercise of manhood ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... about that!" growled Winters. "Gimme that, you space jerk!" He snatched the application out of Roger's hand and stomped out of ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... his enemy standing there so easy and undisturbed, facing death so steadily and so alertly, Brill's passion seethed up and overflowed. Fury filmed his eyes. He saw red. With a jerk, his revolver was out and smoking. A stop watch could scarce have registered the time before Keller's weapon ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... tale—in broken bits they gave it, a sentence at a time. They were ready to talk but knew not how. Few their words, and those they used would be empty on paper, meaningless without the puckered lip, the interhiss, the brutal semi-snarl restrained by human mastery, the snap and jerk of wrist and gleam of steel-gray eye, that really told the tale, of which the spoken word was mere headline. Another, a subtler theme was theirs that night; not in the line but in the interline it ran; and listening to the hunter's ruder tale, I heard as one may hear the night bird singing ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... snapping of a twig in the underbrush brought his mind back with a jerk to their present plight. He wished they had brought the rifles from the plane. Some animal was lurking there in the shadows. Wolves, grizzlies, ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... he's tricky—too deep and too slick for you." Chadron gathered up his reins, leaned over and whispered: "Don't say anything about that Thorn yarn to her"—a sideways jerk of the head toward his wife—"her trouble's deep enough without ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... cart. The train rumbled into the station, and, starting as though I had just perceived it, I bounded up the stair, slammed my ticket into the chopper, and dived across the platform. The guard at the rear of the train held the gate open for me an instant, and then clanged it shut. We were off with a jerk; as I looked back, I saw Martigny rush out upon the platform. He stood staring after me for an instant; then, with a sudden grasping at his breast, staggered and seemed to fall. A crowd closed ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... but should hang well down on the hip. This is for two reasons. In the first place, it does not drag so heavily at your anatomy, and falls naturally into position when you are mounted. In the second place, you can jerk your gun out more easily from a loose-hanging holster. Let your knife-sheath be so deep as almost to cover the handle, and the knife of the very best steel procurable. I like a thin blade. If you are a student of animal anatomy, you can skin and quarter ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... to arrange his thoughts for the coming interview, Captain Carey studied her imperious back and shoulders, the haughty poise of her head; and though he was not the one that had behaved badly, he had never felt so small. At the door of the morning-room she dismissed him with a jerk of the hand. "You know your way," ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... "That jerk I made class president? Of course, Billy. We will be glad to save him for you alone." The instructor's smile was ...
— Be It Ever Thus • Robert Moore Williams
... curious sight it was to see some of the men take their seats who had never before ridden on ox-back. It is impossible to guide an ox as one would guide a horse, for in the attempt to do so you would instantly jerk the stick out of his nose, which at once deprives you of every control over the beast; but by pulling both sides of the bridle at the same time, and toward the side you wish him to take, he is easily managed.[1] Your ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... stopped with a jerk. Mr. Riley stood tranced at: "And ten is thirty-five." Mr. Ball was stricken dumb in the celebration of his own great physical powers. The crowd in Oesterle's forgot Columbus, and were as men beholding a ghost. The drowsy congregation ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... had to sell for five shillings) he would be able to drive his van without horses or any thing, save the pole sticking straight out in front. These weren't the professor's exact words—But, anyway, Mae came to himself with a sudden jerk, left with a great Scottish snort of disgust and the sound of heavy boots along the floor; and after a resentful whisky at the Royal, where they laughed at his scrooging bushy eyebrows, fierce black eyes and his deadly-in-earnest denunciation of all humbugs and imposters, he returned ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... jerk, a noise like champagne being uncorked in another room, and a faint whistling sound. For just one instant I had a sense of enormous tension, a transient conviction that my feet were pressing downward with a force of countless tons. It ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... Yates, strolling into the barn, taking a telescopic metal cup from his pocket, and clinking it into receptive shape by a jerk of the hand. He offered the now elongated cup to Hiram, who ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... assistant proceed to work upon the violin. In general condition it happens to be very good, the one opening referred to being the time at which the modern bar had been attached in place of the very old and small-sized one. The fingerboard being old is easily removed by a sudden pull or jerk. After further cleaning with the aid of a hog-hair brush, this being adapted for getting more completely into the corners, both parts of the violin—they have both had a cleaning and looks more wholesome—are ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... told himself, sitting up with a jerk. But nature was insistent, and he became sleepy again. He was suddenly awakened by what seemed some horrid, human cry close to ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... obey him. When they are quite close, he looks cautiously around, and then draws a large white letter out of his pocket, and hands it to Jack. Jack looks at it, and shows it to Polly. Then he looks at the little green man, who nods his head with a funny little jerk. ...
— Up the Chimney • Shepherd Knapp
... standstill with a jerk which, but for Flint's hand put out to steady her, would have thrown the pale little woman to the floor. He stopped at the car-steps, lifted her and her bundles, her boy and her bird-cage, to the platform, ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... the storm than I was—I had something to do to comfort her. She was, as I have said, like one distracted, and went raving about the cabin, crying out she was undone! undone! she should be drowned! and the like. And at last, the ship giving a jerk, by the force, I suppose, of some violent wave, it threw poor Amy quite down, for she was weak enough before with being sea-sick, and as it threw her forward, the poor girl struck her head against the bulk-head, as the seamen call it, of the cabin, and laid her as dead as a stone upon ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... split second of suspense. If a foot stirred, or a hand raised, Andrew's curling hand would jerk up and bring out a revolver, and every man in the room knew it. Then the voice of Henry, "You'd ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... business and shan't be sorry when it's finished. I give you my word I couldn't sleep a wink last night because of the quiet. I was just dropping off when a beast of a bird outside the window gave a chirrup, and it brought me up with a jerk as though somebody had fired a gun. There's a damned cat somewhere near my room that mews. I lie in bed waiting for the next ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... down. No eye could follow the lightning speed with which he whipped out his revolver and fanned it, but by a mortal fraction of a second the convulsive jerk of Silent's hand was faster still. Two shots followed—they were rather like one drawn-out report. The woodwork splintered above the outlaw's head; Tex Calder seemed to laugh, but his lips made no sound. He pitched ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... shoutin' off your sea-lawyer mouth," Mr. Pike continued, "I'll jerk you out of that and show you ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... up to you to cinch again, with your foot in the pack, as I did here just a little. That tightens all the slack clear to your corners. Now when your rope comes back to me for the last tightening I haul it hard as I can and tie off at my cinch-ring. I use a knot which I can jerk loose easily if I want to tighten or loosen the pack on the trail. So, there you are, all set." And Uncle Dick slapped old Billy on the hip as he stood groaning in great pretense of suffering, at which old Billy walked forward ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... in a tumultuous mood, and almost ran down two ladies who were engaged in absorbing conversation at a crossing. They were his Aunt Fanny and the stout Mrs. Johnson; a jerk of the reins at the last instant saved them by a few inches; but their conversation was so interesting that they were unaware of their danger, and did not notice the runabout, nor how close it came to them. ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... prospect of bringing the captain to justice, determined to quit the ship, if possible. This was effected by accident, otherwise I should have been much puzzled to have got clear of her. I fell between the boat and the wharf as I landed, and by the sudden jerk ruptured a small bloodvessel in my chest; it was of no great importance in itself, but in that climate required care, and I made the most of it. They would have carried me on board again, but I begged to be taken to the hotel. The surgeon of the regiment doing duty there ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... this rope or that which controlled the wilful canvas needed another pull. But if the yard itself had not been laid right, it was too late to mend it. To start a brace with the men on the spar might cause a jerk that would spill from it some one whose both hands were in the work, contrary to the sound tradition, "One hand for yourself and one for the owners." I believe the old English phrase ran, "One for yourself and one for the king." Then, when all was over and snug once more, the men down from aloft, ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... with a sudden jerk, and then regained the deck by the starboard shrouds. For nothing in the world would I have again ventured, shaken as I was, upon the overhanging port shrouds, from which Israel had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the individuals being all worker-minors. Each one places itself on the surface of a leaf, and cuts, with its sharp scissor-like jaws, a nearly semicircular incision on the upper side; it then takes the edge between its jaws, and by a sharp jerk detaches the piece. Sometimes they let the leaf drop to the ground, where a little heap accumulates, until carried off by another relay of workers; but, generally, each marches off with the piece it has operated upon, and as all take the same road to their colony, the path they follow ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... the murderer be given up to him. His demand was readily granted, whereupon the white man advanced on the cowering wretch, who had confidently expected the protection of his people, and with the quick fling and jerk of a raw-hide rope bound his arms to his side. Then casting a noose about his neck and tying the end of it to his saddle-bow, he set off for the Hudson. All that night he rode, the Indian walking and ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... the husband, in an undertone of amiable chiding; and the buggy gave a jerk of thankful relief as its principal burden left it for the sidewalk, diffusing the ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... loose and jerk de door open so quick and hard I knock de powder gourd down what was hanging over it, and my feet git caught in the string. The stopper gits knocked out, and when I untangle it from my feet and throw it back in de house it fall ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... With a little jerk Betty hung up the receiver, and sat staring out of the window with the tears streaming down her cheeks. She brushed them away impatiently and felt feverishly ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... shoulder, and with a jerk of his head directed his companions to retire toward the huts. They obeyed, with one or two backward glances. Left alone with Parr, Sadau looked up with a wise, ...
— The Devil's Asteroid • Manly Wade Wellman
... great care. The young man, being for the moment at leisure, surveyed critically the gaunt figure, the faded bandanna, the antique clawhammer coat, and the battered stove-pipe hat, with a gradually relaxing countenance. He even called the prescription clerk's attention by a cough and a quick jerk of the thumb. The prescription clerk smiled freely, and continued his assaults upon ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... There was a jerk at the outside handle, a cracking and scraping of wood, an icy blast set the little fire roaring. An instant later, a long gun, with a muffled face behind it, appeared ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... abruptly, with a jerk of her breath, as the street-lamp revealed a tall and easy figure approaching from the north, swinging a stick in time to its stride. She had given ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... trees, that the driver seemed to find his way by instinct. We had the comfort of knowing, at least, that there was no danger of his falling asleep, for every now and then a wheel would strike against an unseen stump with such a jerk, that he was fain to hold on pretty tight and pretty quick, to keep himself upon the box. Nor was there any reason to dread the least danger from furious driving, inasmuch as over that broken ground the horses ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... dirty trucks stopped with an abrupt jerk and noisy jarring of impact. Then it came! Grumbles ceased as if by common consent. There was something indefinable but pregnant, and in tense silence ears were strained intently. Was it only the rumble of a distant cart on hard ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... beyond this we met with no molestation. The torpedoes were loaded shells planted on each side of the road, and so connected by wires attached to friction-tubes in the shells, that when a horse's hoof struck a wire the shell was exploded by the jerk on the improvised lanyard. After the loss of several horses and the wounding of some of the men by these torpedoes, I gave directions to have them removed, if practicable, so about twenty-five of the prisoners were brought up and made ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... apprehension. In spite of every effort to fix his attention on the conversation of his companions, I noticed that every now and then he would turn his head slowly round, give a glance over his shoulder, and then withdraw it with a sudden jerk, as if something painful had met his eye. This was repeated at intervals of about a minute, and he appeared hardly to have got over one shock, before I saw him slowly ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... and then, releasing my grasp upon the supporting ornament, I swung out into space at the end of the strap. Far below me lay the brilliantly lighted streets, the hard pavements, and death. There was a little jerk at the top of the supporting eaves, and a nasty slipping, grating sound which turned me cold with apprehension; then the hook caught ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... wrenches the parasol out of your hands and puts it up with a jerk; you take it, heaving a very loud sigh, upon which your mother seizes it again and ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... or two at the station. I can speak to her then," he thought. "I won't tell her that I am going, but I can say something." Then the station appeared in view, and the mare was pulled up with a jerk; Ogilvie jumped to his feet, and lifted Sibyl ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... really afraid, but because he feels skittishly inclined to turn back, or to make trouble between his enemies - the boatmen, his task-master, and the cycler, an intruder on his exclusive domain, the Erie tow-path. A span of mules will pretend to scare, whirl around, and jerk loose from the driver, and go "scooting" back down the tow-path in a manner indicating that nothing less than a stone wall would stop them; but, exactly in the nick of time to prevent the tow-line jerking them sidewise into ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... room, and bade her good night. Ann Harriet had the usual share of curiosity which all females—even plump ones—possess; and wishing to know how a Boston street appeared in the evening, she hoisted the curtain with a vigorous jerk, and looked forth: it was not a very beautiful scene; long rows of brick houses stretched away on either side, relieved at intervals by the street lamps and loafers, which, as they appeared at a distance, reminded her of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... over heights where the pines grew and down through the open swales between, dropped off, and died finally away among the willows along the south fork of the Malheur, Drake reined in his horse with a jerk. ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... of his operations, he stopped with a jerk and sat up motionless, save for a tremulous quiver of his muzzle. There was certainly something moving close at hand. Long before the faint vibration had reached his ears, his whiskers had caught it and flashed their danger-signal to his brain. ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... me home after the slaughter, orders me a diet of chicken breast, peche Melba and champagne, or warns my family that I am on no account to be disturbed until lunch. No, they jerk your jaw off its hinges and dump your remains on the doorstep for the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... beauty in anything." As if mindful of a neglected duty, Glass turned upon him. "What are you waiting for? Get those dog-beds off your back." He seized the slack of a sweater and gave it a jerk. ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... said Yates, strolling into the barn, taking a telescopic metal cup from his pocket, and clinking it into receptive shape by a jerk of the hand. He offered the now elongated cup to Hiram, who declined any ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... more at her ease, but she still stole frequent furtive glances at Valentine from time to time, and moved with an uncomfortable jerk if he bent forward to her or seemed about to come near to her. He seemed now really interested in her personality, and Julian began to wonder if its very vulgarity came to him with a ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... longer struggled, was only waiting an opportunity to make a bold push for freedom. With a sudden jerk he left the collar of his coat in the hands of Mr. Vandeleur, and once more made off at his best speed in the ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... eventually rowed. At the starter's gun the train gave another convulsive jerk, which sent Tom's injured foot flying against the side of the car, and the crowd fanned into life its jaded enthusiasm. Out in the gathering dusk the two crews inched their way along. It was not quite clear which was which, ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... cried Sophia, giving her head an angry jerk which almost sent the brush out of her ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... into the nook. I turned it listlessly in my hands and stood wrapped in sorrowful thought. A low chuckle broke the spell, and at the same moment a lariat whizzed through the air and encircled my body. A jerk and I was thrown to the ground, my arms held to my sides. Almost before I could begin to struggle the coils of the rope were deftly bound about me and I was helpless as a mummy. Then Jean Pahusca, deliberate, cruel, mocking, sat down beside me. The ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... birds entered the box, and chattered and feasted, but the cover did not fall, and the time the children were waiting in silence seemed very long. At length an old, strong bird caught up a grain attached to the string, and gave it a violent jerk. Out came the little prop, and down went the heavy cover, and a jolly old singer was entrapped. He screamed and fluttered, and his frightened companions flew away over the ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... the girls gave vent to startled exclamations, but Miss Baylis was speechless with rage. Electra turned and twisted in her frantic endeavors to discover the origin of the upheaval, and Petty made a mad scramble for her history book which the sudden jerk had sent flying out of her hands, the sentimental missive fluttering from its hiding place to drop at Beverly's feet. Stooping hastily, Beverly caught it up unnoticed in the greater confusion, though she could not help ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... car to a standstill with a jerk and within half an inch of a City policeman who was directing the traffic with his back turned to Bones, blissfully unconscious of the ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... his seat, Mr. Grey approached him, remarking abruptly, and with a jerk of the head toward Cecilia, "Florentine, is ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... told her, looking out over the crap tables. "It's new, and different. But I'm not anybody's darling." A jerk of my head told her to ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the least assistance. Now, conceive my horror, when this Mr. Le Gros I have mentioned, being on one side of Georgina and I on the other, suddenly staggers away from the narrow path on to the smooth ice, gives us a jerk, lets go, and plunges headforemost down the smooth ice into the black night, five hundred feet below! Almost at the same instant, a man far behind, carrying a light basket on his head with some of our spare cloaks in it, misses his footing and rolls down in another place; and after him, rolling ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... whereas for himself, he was willing to forego the honorable title of "Papa," and could not help feeling a decided preference for the simple name of Briest, if for no other reason, because it was so beautifully short. "And then as for the children," he said—at which word he had to give himself a jerk as he exchanged gazes with Innstetten, who was only about a dozen years his junior—"well, let Effi just remain Effi, and Geert, Geert. Geert, if I am not mistaken, signifies a tall and slender trunk, and so Effi may be the ivy destined to twine about it." At these words the betrothed couple ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... in that great rush of water. It was only with the greatest care that we could possibly accomplish the feat, and of this I warned my men. In fact, the moment the canoe came down at an angle on the steep incline she gave such a mighty jerk that my men, with the exception of Alcides, let go the ropes. Some of them had the skin taken clean off their fingers. I saw the canoe give a great leap. To my horror, a moment after the canoe had passed me down the rapid—I was holding one of the ropes at the lower part of the rapid—I saw Alcides, ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Although plants are influenced by external agents, as light, heat, electricity, etc., yet it is supposed that they may move in response to inward impulses. The sensitive stamens of the barberry, when touched at their base on the inner side, resent the intrusion, by making a sudden jerk forward. Venus's fly-trap, a plant found in North Carolina, is remarkable for the sensitiveness of its leaves; which close suddenly and capture insects which chance to alight upon them. The muscles ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... ner never could git ahead, so overly much O' this world's goods at a time.— 'Fore now I've saw him, more'n one't, lend a dollar, and haf to, more'n like, Turn round and borry a dime! Mebby laugh and joke about it hisse'f fer a while—then jerk his coat. And kindo' square his chin, Tie on his apern, and squat hisse'f on his old shoe-bench, And go to ...
— Riley Songs of Home • James Whitcomb Riley
... clanked once, twice, thrice; then a long pause and another clank, then a further pause. But my foot was still on the hawser, and I felt that it was steadily, although very slowly, yielding, and there was a moment when I could almost have sworn that I felt the ship jerk ever so slightly sternward. So I ventured to stimulate the men ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... on and on, in this mood of hungry wistful love and humility and self-reproach, Ethel would bring herself back with a jerk to the Amy she had known; but again she would feel herself borne along upon the tide of his belief, and she was glad that it was so. So the picture grew. Nor was it only when they talked. For often ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... without a chance, old Doubleyear managed to get down into the water behind him, and holding him by one hand, the boy was thus enabled to make a plunge forward as the body was floating by. He succeeded in reaching it; but the jerk was too much for the weakness of his aged companion, who was pulled forward into the canal. A loud cry burst from both of them, which was yet more loudly echoed by Peggy on the bank. Doubleyear and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... only been there about five minutes when our neighbor's line began to jerk twice, thrice, and then he pulled out a chub as thick as my thigh; rather less, perhaps, but nearly as big! My heart beat, the perspiration stood on my forehead and Melie said to me: 'Well, you sot, did ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Charming put a little oil on one linchpin, and slipped it out so softly, the first thing they knew about it was the wheel of that side was down. T'other fellow's at work now; but he makes more noise about it. When the linchpin comes out on his side, there'll be a jerk, I tell you! Some think it will spoil the old cart, and they pretend to say that there are valuable things in it which may get hurt. Hope not,—hope not. But this is the great Macadamizing place,—always cracking ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... holding the tube allows it to jerk or rebound after each blow of the hammer, the paper may break, because air and sand are driven down by the succeeding blow, and therefore it must be held steadily so that the piston bears fairly ...
— Pressure, Resistance, and Stability of Earth • J. C. Meem
... seemed that if soldiers schemed to adapt the flying-machine to purposes of death and destruction, doctors might do the same to purposes of life and salvation. Think of the difference between being jolted for hours in a bullock-cart in the dust and heat and being borne through the air without jerk or jar. Think of the hundreds of men who, in the course of one campaign, would be saved from the ghastly fate of lying unfound, unseen by the stretcher-bearers, to starve to death, to lie weltering in their blood, to live ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... sitting up with a jerk, and rubbing both fists into her eyes. "I'm just as wide awake as you are. ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... a way station with apparent unwillingness, and there was barely time for one elderly passenger to be hurried on board before a sudden jerk threw her almost off her unsteady old feet and we moved on. At my first glance I saw only a perturbed old countrywoman, laden with a large basket and a heavy bundle tied up in an old-fashioned bundle-handkerchief; then I discovered that she was a friend of mine, Mrs. Peet, who lived on ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... you doin'? You are married to me, in the sight of God. You belong to me an' I to you, forever an' forever!' Then they begun cryin' out,—'Go 'way!' 'Take her away!' 'What d's she mean?' an' old Mr. Larrabee ketched holt of her arm. She begun to jerk an' trimble all over; she drawed in her breath in a sort o' groanin' way, awful to hear, an' then dropped down on the floor in a fit. I bu'st out in a terrible spell o' cryin';—I couldn't 'a' helped it, to save ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... her back was turned to the "lady," she did not, for an instant, understand the loud splash behind them, and Maurice's exclamation, "Capsized!" The jerk of their boat, as he backed water, made it rock violently. "Idiots!" said Maurice. "I'll pick you up!" he yelled, and rowed hard toward the three people, now slapping about in not very deep water. "Tried ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... in—the Nothing wanted in. He knew, then, that Horne and Silverman had not been insane. It wanted in and someday it would get in. When it did it would explode him and jerk out his guts and lungs. Not until that happened, not until the Nothing filled the bubble and enclosed his hideous, turned-inside-out body would it ...
— The Nothing Equation • Tom Godwin
... broke through with a sudden jerk, and then regained the deck by the starboard shrouds. For nothing in the world would I have again ventured, shaken as I was, upon the overhanging port shrouds, from which Israel ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Ostap had taken it and put it under his head; and there he lay, stretched out on the ground, snoring so that the whole plain rang again. Andrii seized the sack abruptly with one hand and gave it a jerk, so that Ostap's head fell to the ground. The elder brother sprang up in his sleep, and, sitting there with closed eyes, shouted at the top of his lungs, "Stop them! Stop the cursed Lyakhs! Catch the horses! catch the horses!"—"Silence! I'll kill you," shouted Andrii in terror, flourishing ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... sometimes throw themselves into this position to avoid being seen. Another reason for this attitude they affirm to be, a power possessed by bears of flinging themselves suddenly forward, by a violent jerk, whilst extended on their backs, so as to bring themselves at once into a boat; but this is a feat of which I do not believe them capable. Whilst speaking of bears, I may mention here, that the mate of the Dundee nearly lost his life this summer, from the fury ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various
... creeping, first of an ache, then of a pain, then of a violent agony in the arches of feet and calves. And, delayed to the last endurable moment, that final terrible anguish when the drop of my full weight pulled shoulder and wrist and elbow joints with that bone-shattering jerk. ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... woman would do for me, I suppose," he replied. "I'm sick of the whole thing," he went on, and opened the gate with a jerk. They began to cross the next field walking ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... said West, and, thrusting his arm down into the crack, he got well hold of the boot, gave it a jerk sidewise, and ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... frightened for fear he should talk Greek; on the other side he was relieved by Sir John Merton,—very civil, very pompous, and talking, at strictured intervals, about county matters, in a measured intonation, savouring of the House-of-Commons jerk at the ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book V • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... incessant matrix of Modern Time, so motherly of monstrous litters of "Gorgon and Hydra and Chimaeras dire"; you will understand what I mean when you consider the quite recent date of, say, the introduction of anaesthetics or antiseptics, the discovery of the knee-jerk, bacteriology, or even of such a doctrine as the circulation of the blood. We are at this very time, if I mistake not, on the verge of new insights which will enable man to laugh at disease—laugh at it in the sense of over-ruling ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... it to behold these waters so smooth and placid while the surf foamed and thundered beyond the reef. I now baited my hooks with fat of the goat and betook me to my angling; nor had I long to wait ere I felt a jerk on my line, and tingling with the joy of it I whipped my rod so furiously that my fish whirled glittering through the air, and flying from my barbless hook lay floundering on the sands behind me; and though of no great size ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... a moment ago." Walt Irvine drew himself away with a jerk from the metaphysics and poetry of the organic miracle of blossom, and surveyed the landscape. "He was running a rabbit the ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... [ir] [or] [ur] her bird work urn fern sir word turn term stir worm hurt herd girl world purr jerk first worst burn ever chirp worth churn serve whirl worse burst perch thirst worship church kernel fir worthy curve verse firm worry curb verb third fur germ birth blur herb birch ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
... of a twig in the underbrush brought his mind back with a jerk to their present plight. He wished they had brought the rifles from the plane. Some animal was lurking there in the shadows. Wolves, grizzlies, some unknown ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... some sort of hazy notion hovering around in my brain, that I ought to learn more about him," the other smiled back. "This thing of being made a target by any fool who happens to own a rifle is something that ought to be stopped with a jerk. Yes, I do expect to try and ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... Mr. Daniel Gregory Mason, whose wholesome influence, by the way, is doing as much perhaps for music in America as American music is, amusingly says: "If indeed the land of Lincoln and Emerson has degenerated until nothing remains of it but a 'jerk and rattle,' then we, at least, are free to repudiate this false patriotism of 'my Country right or wrong,' to insist that better than bad music is no music, and to let our beloved art subside finally under the clangor of the subway gongs and automobile horns, dead, but not dishonored." And ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... there by a small brass chain, some inattentiveness, some want of care, my ill-luck, in short, led me to set it down in unstable equilibrium on the edge of the desk. It tumbled-I heard the little chain rattle-it tumbled farther-then stopped short. The mischief was done. The sudden jerk, as it pulled up, had detached an enormous drop of ink from the point of the pen, and that drop—Ah! I can see him yet, as he rose from the shadow of the desk, that small, white-haired man, so ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... thought she had forgotten her grievance over not being invited to attend the evening party for the older sisters. But Peace remembered, and in the gray of the early dawn before anyone else was awake in the great house, the door of the flag room burst open with a jerk and a joyous voice shrieked ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... was on the floor, but one fairly heavy valise was in the rack over Yussuf Dakmar's head. Jeremy got up to examine it when the pistol had ceased to amuse him, and taking advantage of a jerk as the train slowed down, contrived to drop it into the Syrian's lap; who rather naturally swore; whereat Jeremy took offence, and accused him of being a descendant of Hanna, son of Manna, who lived for a thousand and one years and ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... sent his car forward, temper in every crisp movement, his gaze travelling over the empty tiers of seats, to fall at last upon Gerard and there rest. With a jerk he jammed down the brake and leaned from the machine. Thick fair hair lay across his boyish forehead above level dark brows, his candid dark-blue eyes went direct to their goal: the metal badge fastened to Gerard's ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... his hat. He saw her reach for the coachman and by touch make him aware that she wished to stop. The horses were pulled up. Mrs. Hawthorne, from the seat into which the jerk had thrown her, made beckoning signs to him, laughing the while, and ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... With a jerk she brought her straying fingers away from her hair, and her wandering eyes away from the sunshine, and her runaway thoughts back to the typewritten page. For three minutes the snap of the little disks crackled through the stillness of the tiny apartment. Then, ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... of evolution. It is for this that I have poured over such works as Huxley, Herbert Spencer, Moses in the bulrushes, Anaxagoras, Lucretius and Hoyle. It is for the purpose of advancing the cause of common humanity and to jerk the rising generation out of barbarism into the dazzling effulgence of clashing intellects and fermenting brains that I have sought the works of Pythagoras, Democritus and Epluribus. Whenever I could find any book that bore upon the subject of evolution, and ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... enthusiastically fond of fishing, gave me thumbs for fingers, short-sighted eyes, indolence, carelessness, and a temper which (usually sweet and angelic) is goaded to madness by the laws of matter and of gravitation. For example: when another man is caught up in a branch he disengages his fly; I jerk at it till something breaks. As for carelessness, in boyhood I fished, by preference, with doubtful gut and knots ill-tied; it made the risk greater, and increased the excitement if one did hook a trout. I can't keep a ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... other husbands and wives, and marvelled that life went smoothly on; there were dinners and dances, there were laughter and light speech. Jim might merely answer her half-timid, half-confident "Good-morning" with only a jerk of his head; he might eat his breakfast in silence, and accord to Julia's brief outline of dinner or evening engagements only a scowling monosyllable. Yet the day proceeded, there was the baby to visit, a dressmaker's appointment to keep, luncheon ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... man got one of those buckets that were used to get salt water from the ocean for washing down decks and for other things. The bucket had a long rope for a handle. And he dropped the bucket overboard and gave the right jerk to the rope, and he pulled it up, full of water. Then he stopped a man who was going by with his cup, and asked him to throw the water over him. The other man asked him where he would ...
— The Sandman: His Sea Stories • William J. Hopkins
... spur him on in his efforts to find Tommy, but he supposed she had not really meant it that way. Darling Tuppence, there was not a girl in the world to touch her! When he saw her——His thoughts were brought up with a sudden jerk. ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... nothing more than the thousands of bull-headed forwards who had come upon him like thunder-bolts in the days of old. With the ease begotten by practice he circled his assailant with his long muscular arms, and gave a quick convulsive jerk in which every sinew of his body participated. The red-bearded man's stumpy legs described a half-circle in the air, and he came down on the stone pavement with a sounding crash which shook every particle of breath ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... once over her shoulder into the glass, he saw the expression on her face, faintly amused, faintly contemptuous, as much as to say: "Thanks! You will never learn!" No, thank God, he wasn't a Frenchman! He finished with a jerk, and the words: "It's too low here." And he went to the door, with the wish to get away from her and go down to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... spread it before her eyes to completely screen the objectionable Doctor from view. "Don't you know your theories are quite out of date? Nobody is old,—we all utterly refuse to be old! Why," and she shut her fan with a sudden jerk, "I shall have you calling ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... invasion of children in the hall. There was whispering; there was giggling; there was, every now and then, a loud thump on the door. Prompted by the children, as I suppose—pushed in by them, certainly—the maid suddenly reappeared with a jerk, "Oh, if you please, come this way," she said. The invasion of children retreated again up the stairs—one of them in possession of my card, and waving it in triumph on the first landing. We penetrated to the other end of the passage. Again, a door was opened. Unannounced, I entered another, ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... rumble of the anchor- chain. The clicking of the sheaves in the blocks as the sails ran down, head-sails first, was music to her; and she detected on the instant the jamming of a jib-downhaul, and almost saw the impatient jerk with which the sailor must have cleared it. Nor did she take interest in the two men beside her till both lights, red and green, came into view as the anchor ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... feet at last—Red-beard had forced him to the exact spot he desired to reach—Gregory's muscles contracted with a jerk. He stopped retreating and began to slide around the islander. If he was successful in carrying out his plan it was best to have Red-beard on the outside ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... appealed and commanded; adapted herself with the suppleness of bronze to mould, with enchanting flashes of egotism; discarded all perception of man's existence in the abstract, when she had surrendered her attention to one, to jerk him out of his heaven by ordering him to go and send her his rival; possessed a quickness of intuition which finished a man's sentences with her eyes, an exquisite sympathy which made a man feel that here at last he was understood (as he would wish himself understood, rather than as he understood ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... numerous pegs with a jerk of her head. The big butler drank off his glass. Everybody ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... with the street lamp, or the plugs in the water trough; nor change the pins, tubs or tube at the well; nor roughly jerk the pump handles at ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... rocks that one had to talk pretty loud to be heard. As we were gliding along quite swiftly, I set my pole on the bottom and gave the boat a sudden push to avoid a boulder, when the pole stuck in the crevice between two rocks, and instead of losing the pole by the sudden jerk I gave, I was the one who was very suddenly yanked from the boat by the spring of the pole, and landed in the middle of the river. I struck pretty squarely on my back, and so got thoroughly wet, but swam for shore amid the shouts of the ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... black alpaca aprons, and, around the neck, a starched ruffle that, through a lack of skill on the part of either the laundress or the nurse who sewed them in, proved a constant source of discomfort to us. I have since seen full-grown men, under slighter provocation than we endured, jerk off a collar, tear it in two, and throw it to the winds, chased by the most soul-harrowing expletives. But we were sternly rebuked for complaining, and if we ventured to introduce our little fingers between the delicate skin ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... hues of some old painter's masterpiece. He feels the charm of our historical continuity, where the immemorial past blends indistinguishably with the present, to the remotest recesses of his imagination. But then the Yankee nature within him must put in a sharp word or two; he has to jerk the bridle for fear that his enthusiasm should fairly run away with him. 'The trees and other objects of an English landscape,' he remarks, or, perhaps we should say, he complains, 'take hold of one by numberless minute tendrils as it ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... century before, at a sale of genteel household furniture. Even now an auctioneer could say something for it: it had a great deal of tarnished gilding about it; it had a firm mahogany base, well supplied with drawers, which opened with a decided jerk and sent the contents leaping out from the farthest corners, without giving you the trouble of reaching them; above all, it had a brass candle-socket on each side, which would give it an aristocratic air to the very last. But Hetty objected ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... me round the waist, dragging me out of the fuselage. I tore at it, my fingers sinking into the smooth, glue-like surface, and for an instant I disengaged myself, but only to be caught round the boot by another coil, which gave me a jerk that tilted me ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... put down his head to browse. There he stood, poor rogue, part puzzled, part angry, part, I believe, amused. He had not given up hope, and dully revolved the problem in his head, giving ever and again another jerk at the few inches of free rope that still remained unwound. A humorous sort of sympathy for the creature took hold upon me. I went up, and, not without some trouble on my part, and much distrust and resistance on the part of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bicycle, as was declared by the short skirt, easy jacket, and brown shoes, which well displayed her athletic person. She was a tall, strongly built girl of six-and-twenty, with a face of hard comeliness and magnificent tawny hair. All her movements suggested vigour; she shook hands with a downward jerk, moved about the room with something of a stride and, in sitting down, crossed ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... drew up with a jerk, and Hebblethwaite came back to earth. Nevertheless, he promised himself, as he hastened across the pavement, that on the morrow he would pay a long-delayed visit to ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... waited, we presume, and edified themselves with the distant bellowings of Doke in the woods, until he came back again, a little warm and hoarse, but otherwise in fine condition. "People were often seized at hotels, and at table would, on lifting a glass to drink, jerk the liquor to the ceiling; ladies would at the breakfast-table suddenly be compelled to throw aloft their coffee, and frequently break the cup and saucer." A certain venturesome clergyman vowed that he would preach down the Jerks, "but he was seized in the midst of his attempt, and made ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... afternoon that Charlie Rankin rode up to the River Farm and greeted Rube, who was hard at work upon the stockade. He was a large, cheery Britisher, with a florid face and ready laugh. He drew up with a jerk, sprang to the ground, and began talking with the perfect freedom of ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... That jerk was powerful enough to cut through the skin of his hand, but the professor chuckled like one delighted, as he sucked away the few drops of blood ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... happy mixture of pliability and perseverance in his nature; he was in form and spirit like a supple-jack—yielding, but tough; though he bent, he never broke; and though he bowed beneath the slightest pressure, yet, the moment it was away—jerk!—he was as erect, and carried his head as high ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... There's the full title and description for you. There's nothing else in the paper." Iver handed it to her with a stifled yawn. She read and turned to Neeld with a quick jerk ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... of triumph. The tough limb, that had been held retent by Basil's weight, becoming so suddenly released, flew upward with a jerk. ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... I was thus trying to jerk my sleepy nerves on to action that I came upon a zigzagged trench. It was fully six feet deep and about a yard wide. It was of course an old Turkish defence running crosswise along the great backbone of the ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... slower still until there ensued a long pause, during which I heard the mate encouraging the crew to a special effort by shouting: "Heave, boys! heave and raise the dead! break him out! another pawl! heave!" and so on; then there occurred a sudden wrenching jerk, followed by a shout of triumph from the crew, the windlass pawls resumed their clanking at a rapid rate for a few minutes longer when they finally ceased, and I knew that our anchor was a-trip and that we had ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... and slipped some money into his pocket. Then he put on a ragged overcoat, and a hat which he drew down over his eyes with a furtive jerk of his yellow fingers. Then he went behind the bar and swallowed something; it was not whisky, but it brought a faint tinge of colour into his cheek, and seemed to ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... strongly, and as the boat rocked uneasily I hauled up the kedge again, for it was bad holding ground, the tackle chafing against the coral banks and sawing away in a manner that promised to make it part if it remained down much longer, the boat's head bobbing down and up every wave with a jerk that must snap ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and higher, stopping with an abrupt jerk, and slid open into a lighted room and office. A man sat behind a desk, watching Bart step from the elevator. The man was very tall and very thin, and the gray eyes, and the intensity of the lights, told Bart that he was ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... yit she gin her cheer a jerk Ez though she wished him furder, An' on her apples kep' to work, ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... having thus emphatically declared herself, resigned the right of speech to her husband, who began to jerk out in disconnected phrases a statement of his case. Seven days ago he had annoyed his wife by some incautious word; she had annoyed him by an incautious answer; he had made matters worse by an aggravating ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... that you're not." Dick Humphries threw the bight of the sail twine over the point of the needle and drew it clear with a couple of deft turns and a jerk. ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... gave himself a little jerk—a throw back of the shoulders which was habitual—which might have been a tribute either to Millicent behind, or ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... opposite the gate to the Schofield cottage, and Bijonah, following their motions like a hawk, saw Nat jerk his thumb in the direction of the house as they ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... last June, one of the London coaches rattled at an amazing rate down the main street of a garrison town, and, with a sudden jerk which threw the smoking horses on their haunches, pulled up at the door of the Waterloo hotel. A beautiful sight it is—a fine, well appointed coach, of what we must now call the ancient fashion, with its smart driver, brilliant harness, and thoroughbred team. Then it is a spectacle ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... wish mother'd make you tend baby once, and see how you'd like it!"—and Mandy rose with an impatient jerk of her bonnet-strings and slowly climbed the steep path to the house. Her mother, standing in the door-way with baby on one arm, shaded her eyes from the sun as she watched the cloudy face under the pink bonnet. It was always ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... he said, with a significant wink accompanied by an upward jerk of a pudgy thumb, "the castle, messieurs, is but two miles further along this road. Perhaps, if milords have friends there, they can ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... the way through the big, dimly-lighted hall to an up-stairs room near the back of the house. Two heavy boxes were lying there, packed and corded, to be taken down-stairs. I tossed aside my cloak and stooped to help him. He straightened with a jerk. I had been standing in the shadow with my soiled cloak wrapped about me, but now I stood revealed in silken hose, satin breeches, and laced doublet. If that were not enough to proclaim my rank a ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... Richards!" cried Miss Nipper, taking up her words with a jerk, "Don't! See her dear papa, indeed! I should like to see her do it! Her pa's a deal too wrapped up in somebody else; and before there was somebody else to be wrapped up in, she never was a favorite. Girls are thrown away in this house, I ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the steering wheel a vicious jerk. We sheered dangerously. She uttered a little, frightened cry, and her gloved fingers closed upon my wrist. I was absolutely certain I had short-circuited a battery wire when, her hand still resting on my arm, she pleaded: "Forgive me for laughing. I remember now that Edith ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... Pummy might have forgot himself. When Abby, not free from fear, as knowing well he was not free from danger, crept to his master's bosom, Pummy gave a low growl, and shoving his nose under the long body of the dog, with one jerk threw him a yard off upon the floor, whence Abdiel returned to content himself with his master's feet, abandoning the place of honour to one who knew himself stronger, and probably counted himself better. So they all fell asleep in peace. For although ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... would fall asleep. Even as he looked their nods began to increase in violence. Their heads would fall over on their shoulders, hang there for a few moments and then their owners would bring them back with a jerk. ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... these things with one sweeping glance, and then proceeded to transform himself. One jerk at the visor of his cap brought it down over his eyes and covered his face with shadow; a single shrug bunched the ragged coat high around his shoulders, and the shoulders themselves he allowed to drop forward. With his hands in his pockets he glided slowly ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... slices along the bone in a saddle of mutton. In cutting a joint of meat, the strong fork is used to steady it; but in carving poultry it is the fork which is most useful in removing the wing and leg by a jerk, without leaving any ragged remains adhering to the body. All this must be accomplished by dexterity, not by strength, and any lady may acquire the art by a ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... from a neighbouring corral. He was not led by men afoot,—that would have been a dangerous undertaking. His conductors were well-mounted vaqueros, who, with their lazoes around his horns, were ready, in case of his showing symptoms of mutiny, to fling him to the earth by a jerk. ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... nor will be half-read, Who first sung Arthur, then sung Alfred; Praised great Eliza in God's anger, Till all true Englishmen cried, 'Hang her!'— Maul'd human wit in one thick satire; Next in three books spoil'd human nature: Undid Creation at a jerk, And of Redemption made damn'd work. Then took his Muse at once, and dipt her Full in the middle of the Scripture. What wonders there the man, grown old, did? Sternhold himself he out Sternholded. Made David seem so mad ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... true, Miss Rose," rejoined Spike, attempting a bow, which ended in a sort of jerk. "It is not very becoming in us republicans to be talking of kings, but a habit is a habit. Our forefathers had kings, and we drop into their ways without thinking of what we ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the elevator, I behind the others, Kite caught my attention with a low whistle, and in response to a furtive, beckoning, backward jerk of his head, I moved over to the desk. The reading gentlemen in the easy chairs, most consciously unconscious of us, sent blue smoke circles above their papers. Kite leaned far over to get his mustache ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... though her fear at that moment was more for her husband than for herself and child. She was quick-witted enough to jerk the reins sharply, so that her pony passed out of sight before the pursuers could suspect her purpose. But the moment she was behind the sheltering swell, she checked her horse and ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... perfunctory protestations they put in every now and then, as if by order, whenever they remember not to be natural. Oh, I know this is very different from what I was writing and feeling two or three days ago, but I've been let down with a jerk, I'm being reminded of the impressions I got in Berlin, they've come up sharply again, and I'm not so confident that what was the matter with the people there was only heat and overwork. There was an eagerness about them, a kind of fever to begin their grabbing. I told you, I think, how Berlin ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... knife from under his dagger and gave it a swift jerk. The bird fluttered, but before it could spread its wings the bleeding head bent ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... what pleasure I used to arrive at, and stand before, a little enclosure in which stood a patient cow chewing her cud, how I would occasionally offer her through the bars a piece of my bread and molasses, and how I would jerk back my hand in half fright if she made any motion ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... the forward jerk and trip which sometimes would do with an opponent not much skilled; but this primer work got results for neither. Banion evaded and swung into a hip lock, so swift that Woodhull left the ground. But his instinct ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... in the gear and let the clutch out with such a jerk that the car leaped forward. Elliott waved his stick again. Mr. Twist responded by the briefest touch of his cap, and whirred down the road ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... laborers, for the English government never gave premiums for idleness and vagabondism among Indians, by feeding and clothing them without effort on their own part. Their dexterity in turning griddle cakes, by shaking the pan and giving it a jerk which sent the cake up into the air and brought it down square into the pan other side up, would have made Biddy's head whirl to see. The "Gov. Ramsey" was the first steamboat which ran above the falls of St. Anthony, and in the spring of '59 she was steamed and hawsered up the ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... In the event of a cross compound beginning to jerk badly and cylinder head pops in low-pressure cylinder popping, where would you look for ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous
... bodies, mostly from Thorpe and Sprague's stage coaches, placed upon trucks. The trucks were coupled together with chains, leaving from two to three feet slack, and when the locomotive started it took up the slack by jerks, with sufficient force to jerk the passengers who sat on seats across the tops of the coaches, out from under their hats, and in stopping, came together with such force as to send them ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... pressure of the brake on the line tightened, the boat began to tear through the water, still requiring the paying out of the rope. For an instant it slackened and the winch reeled in a little line. There was a sudden jerk and then the line fell slack. Working like demons, the men made the winch handles fairly fly as the line came in, and within another minute the whale spouted, blowing strongly and sounding again. He sulked at the bottom for over twenty minutes, coming up suddenly ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... head fell with a sudden jerk, and she roused herself up; and Sylvia put by her thought of the dead, and her craving after his presence, into that receptacle of her heart where all such are kept closed and sacred from the light ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... dirge of our hopes. Lestrade and Mycroft were fidgeting in their seats and looking twice a minute at their watches. Holmes sat silent and composed, his eyelids half shut, but every sense on the alert. He raised his head with a sudden jerk. ...
— The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans • Arthur Conan Doyle
... frowned, and dropped himself into a chair. His eyes studied the fire moodily. "You see," he resumed, after a moment, "there's a peculiar, elusive something about her expression—" (Billy stirred restlessly and gave her thread so savage a jerk that it broke)"—a something that isn't easily caught by the brush. Anderson and Fullam—big fellows, both of them—didn't catch it. At least, I've understood that neither her family nor her friends are satisfied with their portraits. And to succeed where Anderson and Fullam ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... beside him, was quiet and sober; and when Tip raised his arm with such a sudden jerk that he knocked his arithmetic to the floor, Bob leaned over and quietly picked it up and laid it back in its place; which was a wonderful thing for Bob ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... Then he dropped his chin and seemed to shut his eyes as he carefully conveyed the load to his mouth, drawing the steel quickly through his thick lips without spilling more than a commensurate amount of the stuff upon his beard, and injuring himself in no way whatever. The quick jerk with which he slipped the steel clear so as to have it ready for another load made me a trifle nervous; but it was evident that he was not a novice at eating. Indeed, the skipper appeared to admire his dexterity, ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... made the preacher feel as though his Satanic majesty had possession of him. In such a crisis he evidently felt that preaching would do no good; he was, however, constrained to make an effort. To use his own words, he said: "I gave a sudden jerk and started off on a trot, leaving my master calling, 'stop! stop!' but I kept on running, and was ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... A FAMOUS FOREIGN ASTRONOMER. M. de Lalande advanced to meet me—-I will not be quite positive it was on tiptoe, but certainly with a mixture of jerk and strut that could not be quite flat-footed. He kissed my hand with the air of a petit-matre, and then broke forth into such an harangue of loges, so solemn with regard to its own weight and importance, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... what should come, while endeavoring to check the animal. He, however, kept his head down, which not only made it difficult to stop him, but also gave me an unpleasant sense as of riding on the cowcatcher of a locomotive with nothing but space in front of me. Once, with a jerk, I managed to get his head up, but when I did that he reared. I do not ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... been passed at Mon Reve, Lady Susan's villa at Montricheux, and with a jerk Ann emerged from her train of retrospective thought to the realisation that her lines had really fallen in very pleasant places, ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... water and a pot of tea. The steak and bacon were eaten on slices of bread without knife or fork. Their repast over, Solomon made a rack and began jerking the meat with a slow fire of green hardwood smoldering some three feet below it. The "jerk" under way, they reclined on their blankets in the snow house secure from the touch of a cold wind that swept down the hillside, looking out at the dying firelight while Solomon told of his adventures in the ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... round her praecordia. The cure was to cut a small square of bacon from just over the heart, and tie it to a silken thread which the Princess must swallow, when the hair would stick to it and come away with a jerk. See (p. 29) "Folk-lore of Guernsey and Sark," by Louise Lane-Clarke, printed by E. Le Lievre, Guernsey, 1880; and I have to thank for it a kind correspondent, Mr. A. Buchanan Brown, of La Couture, p. 53, who informs us why the Guernsey ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... Major and his welcome guest were spinning along in the cool of the evening, toward the deserted ruins of the old city of Delhi! As they passed through the Lahore gate, Hardwicke's pith helmet was doffed with a jerk, as a superb carriage passed them, proceeding in a stately swing. Major Alan Hawke bowed low as he caught the cold eye of ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... car, with a soft purring engine came up to the Crossroads from Economy, slowed just a fraction as it crossed the Highway, the driver looking keenly at the barricade, then stopping his car with a sudden jerk and swinging out. He turned a pocket flash on the big card board Billy had erected, its daubed letters still wet and blurring into the pasteboard. He looked a bit quizzical over the statement, "RODE FLOODED, BRIGE DOWN," because he happened to know there was no bridge and nothing ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... drying powder for dusting on weeping eruptive sores between parts which approximate to one another, as the fingers, toes, and armpits. The powder is very inflammable, and when propelled in a hollow cone against lighted spirit of wine on tow at the other end by a sudden jerk, its flash serves to imitate lightning for stage purposes. It was formerly used as tinder for lighting fires with ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... to see you all again. Home?" He glanced swiftly round at the scene about them. "This is home, I guess." Then he laughed. "The other," he went on, with a backward jerk of the head to indicate Leaping Horse, whence he had just come, "why, the other's just a sort of dumping ground for the waste left over—after home's finished with things. Bill, here, don't feel that way. He guesses we're ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... movements, she was the most active and energetic woman in the town. She went through the physical exercises of a prayer-meeting with astonishing vigor. It was exhilarating to see her wash a shirt, and a study to watch her do it up. A quick jerk shook out the dampened garment; one pass of her ample palm spread it over the ironing-board, and a few well-directed strokes with the iron accomplished what would have occupied the ordinary laundress ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... fifty churches tolled the hour. It was one o'clock in the morning. The traveler had traveled backwards, it would seem, into the middle ages. As he heard the church bells he gave an angry upward jerk of the head, as if the sound confirmed a thought that was already in his mind. The bells seemed to be all around him; the towers of the churches seemed to dominate the sleeping city on every side. There ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... the brakes went on with a jerk, and a tall crane loomed up vaguely in front. All four men sprang to the ground, and while the chauffeur busied himself with the big lamps Curtis and Devar disconnected ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... that came to him was the laying down of the crystal ball. It was laid back upon the table with a slight jerk that indicated a decision come to; and almost simultaneously the seer's voice came to him again. Her tone was lower now than it had been before, and its extreme ease seemed slightly shaken—whether by excitement, surprise, or curiosity, it was ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... negative, was so overcome by the popular breeze in favor of the soldiers, that he came into the hospital with a roll of bank-bills in his hand, and passing from cot to cot gave each wounded man a five-dollar bill, repeating, with a spasmodic jerk of his head and a forced smile, "Make yourself comfortable; make yourself comfortable, my good fellow." I am afraid he, poor fellow, did not feel very comfortable, as his money was screwed out of him by the power of ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... it were going up or down, though it seemed to be doing both, as though poised on a gigantic spring. At length faint glimmers of light began to flash past as it shot by the mouths of working levels, and finally it stopped with a jerk that threw its passengers into a ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... hold of the wire and gave a tremendous jerk, when, dreadful to relate, POP! out came poor Miss Morris's eyes completely! and tumbled down somewhere inside of her! leaving two great holes in her head of the ...
— Funny Little Socks - Being the Fourth Book • Sarah. L. Barrow
... you are, Senor Taltavull," said the other quietly. He deliberately drew back the shutter, exposed the yellowy-green film to the full sun-glare, and flung it from him with a sideways jerk. ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... a leaf or other support below and to the surface of the water. As soon as it comes near the surface it turns with the extremity of the abdomen upwards, and exposes a portion of the body to the air for an instant, then with a jerk it snatches, as it were, a bubble of air, which is not only attached to the hairs which cover the abdomen, but is held on by the two hinder legs, which are crossed at an acute angle near their extremity; this crossing of the legs taking place at the instant the bubble is seized. The little ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... beats were almost abreast now, and hurriedly Miss Prue turned her head. At once she gave the reins an angry jerk; in the other light carriage sat Rupert Joyce, the young man who for weeks had been unsuccessfully trying to find favor in her eyes because he had already found it in the eyes of her ward and ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... short of a miracle, as Sir Patrick acknowledged. He had followed Allen at first as the grieve had thought, but his mind was full of the parting he had just gone through and of the misty future before him, and when his thoughts came back with a jerk to the actualities of the present, he heard the rush of a winter river and found that he was close by the side of the Tweed. It was some time before he could exactly find his bearings, but he did so at last, and, after some reconnoitring, found ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... run for Dover. I was hardly off on that tack when I found her"—with a backward jerk ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... going to the nearest window and flinging it open with a jerk. "Stifling! There, that ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... looking at two horses rolling in the snow near a farmhouse, I suddenly felt a great jerk and we were pitched out headlong! Our horse wanted to have some fun! So he fell on his side and was about to roll over and enjoy himself, taking the sleigh with him; but we did not see the joke. We succeeded in putting him on his legs. The driver gave the ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... worked, and with a certain smugness, on a basis that might be turned against them. Chad had at any rate pulled his visitor up; he had even pulled up his admirable mother; he had absolutely, by a turn of the wrist and a jerk of the far-flung noose, pulled up, in a bunch, Woollett browsing in its pride. There was no doubt Woollett HAD insisted on his coarseness; and what he at present stood there for in the sleeping street was, by his manner of striking the other ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... round violently, then he felt himself dragged in great jerks along the rocky floor, which, happily for him, was smooth. A fourth jerk, and once more he was in the waters of the pool, ay, and being ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... A small, notched peg is next driven into the ground and the top of the pole caught in it, and thus held in a bent position. When the animal is caught, its struggles release the pole, and the latter, flying up with a jerk, [Page 145] lifts the trap and its occupant high in the air, out of the reach of marauders, and beyond the power of escape by self-amputation. Even in the capture of large game the spring pole often serves to good purpose. The struggles ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... I wound the thread around him a few times, and he broke it with a single jerk. Then I wound the thread around and around, and by and by ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... upon the piazza, swept her eyes over the scene and beheld the couple on the lawn, she gave a jerk to the glove she was drawing on her hand that tore in it a slit three inches long. She then turned her eyes upon her phaeton, declined the offer of Mr. Petter to see her home, and, after a leave-taking which was a little more effusive than was usual ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... the wagon. "I've been ranching on this river nearly forty years, and I've always made it a rule, where cattle cannot be safely handled, to beef them then and there. I've sat up many a night barbecuing the ribs of a ladino. If you have plenty of salt, Tiburcio, you can make a brine and jerk those hind quarters. It will make fine chewing for the boys on night herd when once we start for ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... pause in all these sounds; the shrill whistle, betokening all was ready; the converting of all the employes into animated sign-posts, that waved their arms wildly; the grunt and wheeze from the engine, as if from a giant in pain; the sharp jerk, and then the steady pull at the carriage in which I was sitting; the "pant, pant! puff, puff!" of the iron horse, as he buckled to his work with a will; and then, finally, the preliminary oscillation of the ponderous train, the trembling and rumbling of creaking wheels along ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... evening, and do himself no very great harm, if he will leave it alone during the day. Danbury had too many friends for that, however, and it really looked as if the poor chap was going to the bad, when a very curious thing happened which pulled him up with such a sudden jerk that he never put his hand upon the neck ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and in another moment fresh tentacles had whipped about his waist and neck, and after a brief, convulsive struggle, in which the boat was nearly capsized, Hill was lugged overboard. The boat righted with a violent jerk that all but sent Mr. Fison over the other side, and hid the struggle in the ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... with a jerk. Separating himself from the complainant and looking fixedly at him, he spoke in a low voice, hissing with wrath. "Look here, uncle! It is a lucky thing for you that you have expressed yourself ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... himself up and felt for his spectacles; they had tumbled off in his flight, and without them his face presented a curiously naked appearance. The alarum in his pocket had stopped suddenly with the jerk of his descent. ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... condemned archers stood and seizing the first by the shoulders he thrust him over the wall. A cry burst from the man's lips and a deep groan from those of his comrades below as he fell with a jerk which sent him half-way up to the parapet again, and then after dancing like a child's toy swung slowly backward and forward with ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a good plan to let the bass have the bait from two to ten seconds, according to the way he takes it; then strike at once, giving him line freely, but keeping the thumb on the reel as a drag. Click reels are an abomination. I never jerk the rod, but hook with a twist of the wrist, remembering the golden rule that from the moment a bass takes the bait until he is landed the line must be kept tight, as one second of slack line will lose him. The point of the rod I keep bent by the pull of the fish, which is made to ...
— Black Bass - Where to catch them in quantity within an hour's ride from New York • Charles Barker Bradford
... little. It was an abrasion such as would be made if the ring she usually wore there had been drawn off with a jerk. That was the impression I received from its appearance. I do not state that it ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... hold of the edge of the paper that is near the edge of the table. Move your hand a little toward the glass so that the paper is somewhat bent. Then, keeping your hand near the level of the table, suddenly jerk the paper out from under the glass. If you give a quick enough jerk and keep your hand near the level of the table, not a drop of water will spill and the glass will stay ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... gardener, "take this gentleman's portmanteau to the lower room," and, as the gardener bestirred himself slowly and with an effort, Oscar seized the portmanteau and swung it, with a jerk, on to the shoulders of the poor fellow, whose legs ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... could successfully angle upon its bosom or along its shores. For millions of Tahoe trout, rainbow, Eastern brook, Loch Levin, Mackinac and German brown have been put into this and nearby lakes in the last few years. While some jerk-line fishing is indulged in, this lake, unlike Lake Tahoe, affords constant recreation ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... the special coaches was barely moving on its jiggly way to the main line, carrying the tag end of the revellers, when he set forth in his car for a mid-day visit to Red Roof. Already the huge camp of Slavs and Italians was beginning to jerk up the borrowed rails and ties; the work trains were rumbling and snorting in the meadows above Blitherwood, tottering about on the uncertain road-bed. He gave a few concise and imperative orders to obsequious superintendents and foremen, who subsequently repeated ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... face that alone," he remonstrated, with a thumb-jerk toward the hall. "I won't see you touched by ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... spinning Miss Thusa, and tell me a story," said the child, venturing to put her little foot on the treadle, and giving the crank a sudden jerk. ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... In spite of every effort to fix his attention on the conversation of his companions, I noticed that every now and then he would turn his head slowly round, give a glance over his shoulder, and then withdraw it with a sudden jerk, as if something painful had met his eye. This was repeated at intervals of about a minute, and he appeared hardly to have got over one shock, before I saw him slowly ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... it was to see some of the men take their seats who had never before ridden on ox-back. It is impossible to guide an ox as one would guide a horse, for in the attempt to do so you would instantly jerk the stick out of his nose, which at once deprives you of every control over the beast; but by pulling both sides of the bridle at the same time, and toward the side you wish him to take, he is easily managed.[1] ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... that after a while he could not tell whether it were going up or down, though it seemed to be doing both, as though poised on a gigantic spring. At length faint glimmers of light began to flash past as it shot by the mouths of working levels, and finally it stopped with a jerk that threw its ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... mustn't knaw, down below, more than you'm tawld," said the old man with a significant wink and a jerk of his head, "but Jerrem he let me into it this ebenin' when he rinned up to see me for a bit. Seems one o' they sodger-chaps is carr'in' on with Eve, and Jerrem's settin' her on to rig un up so that her'll get un not to see what 'tain't maned ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... seat, Mr. Grey approached him, remarking abruptly, and with a jerk of the head toward Cecilia, ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... his arms, and he pointed his remarks with forceful gestures. His voice, never pleasant, rose to a shrill treble in moments of excitement. After the familiar manner of Western speakers of that day, he was wont to bend his knees and then rise to his full height with a jerk, to enforce some point.[714] Yet with all his ungraceful mannerisms, Lincoln held his hearers, impressing most men with a sense of the honesty of ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... of the revolvers had returned to its holster, the free hand was upon the bolt,—"and I'll drop you, every cursed one of you, in your tracks. I'll drop you if I swing the next second." With a jerk, the door opened wide, and like a flash the hand returned to the holster. "Come in, you idiot," he challenged into the darkness without, "come in and take your ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... that squares accounts," said Warrington, speaking to Craig. "If you hear of me in America, in Europe, anywhere, keep away from the places I'm likely to go. Tell him," with an indifferent jerk of his head toward the insensible Mallow, "tell him that I give him that fifty pounds with the greatest good ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... wholly possible that a globe-trotting widow would have friends in many parts of the world, and I could see nothing disturbing in the fact that inquiries had been made for her. I said as much. Antoine's answer was another shrug and a jerk of his head toward Flynn, as though even the employment of an alien tongue might not conceal our conversation from the big Irishman. Antoine was manifestly impatient at my refusal to be aroused by his hints of discord among ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... down. Laurie watched Mr. Vincent step up into the cabinet, jerk the curtains this way and that, and at last sit easily back, in such a way that his face could be seen in a kind of twilight, and the rest of his ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... track and using such speed as they dared to escape from a situation that had become perilous. But the light caboose, packed like a sardine-box with men, was dancing a hornpipe on the rail-joints. McCloud felt the peril, and the lurching of the car could be seen in the jerk of the engine tender to which it was coupled. Apprehensive, he crawled back on the coal to watch the caboose himself, and stayed long enough to see that the rapidly drifting snow threatened to derail ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... will be rather attracted by that same scarlet and orange foot, which is being drawn in and thrust out to a length of nearly four inches, striking with its point against any opposing object, and sending the whole shell backwards with a jerk. The point, you see, is sharp and tongue-like; only flattened, not horizontally, like a tongue, but perpendicularly, so as to form, as it was intended, a perfect sand-plough, by which the animal ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... his reverie with a start, and straightened himself up with a jerk. "What makes you think ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... off on the line a few inches at a time, but always keeping it taut and always holding herself braced for a sudden jerk. At last the end came into her hand. She had to lie out on the rim-rock and call down to him. He called back in a tone of quiet assurance. The line slackened. He had cast it loose. The lantern glowed out in the blackness and showed him standing on ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... and explained this to him; but it was easy to see that he did not care a bit about that, and he once more took up his favourite attitude and his pipe. I left him in peace for five minutes, during which time he was able to imagine himself triumphant, and then with a sudden jerk of my elbow I broke the pane of glass. Stupefaction was depicted on the major's face, and he became livid. He got straight up, but the two young men rose at the same time, whilst the baron burst out laughing ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... something on the table, a lump of metal, cold and heavy. She seized and dashed it brutally into that hateful face, saw his head jerk back and heard him grunt with pain, and struck again, ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... bargain which Bones had made. Bones, with a real locomotive to play with—he had given the aged engine-driver a week's holiday—saw nothing but the wonderful possibilities of pulling levers and making a mass of rusting machinery jerk asthmatically forward at the ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... his head! It was enough; his humiliation was complete. Drawing his sword from its scabbard, he placed the point on the ground; then, bending the blade into the form of a bow, he gave the hilt a sudden, peculiar thrusting jerk, and the blade snapped in twain. Then, tossing the hilt from him, he exclaimed, in a tone of concentrated bitterness, "I surrender!" and burst into tears ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... education. After a short time our scholar was transferred to the parish-school of the town, kept by a Mr. White, where he was placed under the charge of a rather severe helper, who, instead of the tawse, administered discipline by means of his knuckles, hard as horn, which he applied with a peculiar jerk to the crania of his pupils. At this school Willie Fairbairn lost the greater part of the singing accomplishments which he had acquired under "Bowed Johnnie," but he learnt in lieu of them to read ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... bare country, ain't it?" observed the drummer, with a jerk of his head toward the window. "Looks bleak enough to me. Know anything about this neck of the woods, ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... pulled off his boots; and jest as Brother Gyardner got into the middle o' the creek, here come Sam wadin' up behind 'em, and grabbed Amos by the shoulder and hollered out, 'You got the wrong man, parson! Here, Amos, take hold o' me.' And he give Amos a jerk that nearly made Brother Gyardner lose his footin', and him and Amos waded up to the shore and left Brother Gyardner standin' there in the middle o' the creek lookin' like ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... descend rocky mountains at full speed and neither trip nor fall, but you must be cautious with the horses of the Moslems, and treat them with kindness, for the horses of the Moslems are proud, and they like not being slaves. When they are young and first mounted, jerk not their mouths with your bit, for be sure if you do they will kill you; sooner or later, you will perish beneath their feet. Good are our horses; and good our riders, yea, very good are the Moslems at mounting the horse; who are like them? I once saw a Frank rider compete with a Moslem on ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... been there about five minutes when our neighbor's line began to jerk twice, thrice, and then he pulled out a chub as thick as my thigh; rather less, perhaps, but nearly as big! My heart beat, the perspiration stood on my forehead and Melie said to me: 'Well, you sot, did you ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... tell me that, Father," he said, almost humbly. "There isn't a feller back there in the camp," he added with a jerk of his head, "that would have hesitated like me when you handed him your dope. Thanks. Say, that darn ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... conditioning the reader by using such phrases as "the great flying saucer scare," "rich, full-blown screwiness," "fearsome freaks," and so forth. By the time the reader gets to the meat of the article he feels like a rich, full-blown jerk for ever even ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... mean that jerking—Frankie began to jerk about half an hour ago when we were sitting down a bit; but he's seemed queer since breakfast. And he didn't seem to be ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... That's what I ask myself, nigh onto a hundred times a day, child. But there's things that takes the finest kind o' wit to see through, and you can't make a bead-purse out of a sow's-ear, neither jerk Time by the forelock, when there a'n't a hair, as you can see, to hang on to. I dunno as you'll rightly take my meanin'; but never mind, all the same, I'm flummuxed, and it's the longest and hardest ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... word, the mealman turned, pulled his clothes about him with a jerk, and, pale and bewildered, started away at a run down ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... her anxiously. "Don't mind him, my dear," she said, with a jerk of her head in the direction of Mr. Piper, "he's nobody. Wouldn't you like to go out on the beach a ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... and, if it had been given in good temper, would not have struck Winnie as anything but a pleasant joke. But he knew, from Gypsy's face, it was no joke; and, feeling his dignity insulted, down he went flat upon the floor with a scream and a jerk that sent two fresh buttons flying ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... right, ending the movement in a plunge that took up the slack and with a sudden jerk arrested his one hundred and fifty pounds. The load quivered, and from under the runners ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... bottom of one of those long, sickening falls there was a jerk—and we continued on down to the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... crack of a single rifle was heard, and Somers observed a slight jerk in the brim of the captain's ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... it for the needle. The end of the thread must be held by the thumb and forefinger. The next stitches are made by taking up the thread with the needle and drawing it through the loop. The throwing of the thread round the needle by a jerk of the wrist is called ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... with a "Yo! heave ho!" and a jerk, until the "belay" sung out by the mate signifies that the work is done. Then, there is the scrambling on the deck when the wind changes quarter, and the yards want squaring as the wind blows more aft. Such are among the ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... breakfast, we started a game of chess. The tide continued to fall, and we felt the sloop begin to list. We played on until the chess men began to fall over. The list increased, and we went on deck. Bow-line and stern-line were drawn taut. As we looked the boat listed still farther with an abrupt jerk. The ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... verge and room enough' to show off all her perfections. Her most peculiar merit consisted, perhaps, in her power of stopping herself suddenly, while going on at the rate of a hunt one way, and without any pause or apparent difficulty going just as fast the other way. This was done by a jerk which must, one would be inclined to think, have dislocated all her bones and entirely upset her internal arrangements. But no; it was done without injury, or any disagreeable result either to her brain or elsewhere. We all know how a steamer is manoeuvred when she has to change her course, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... to jerk away, and Bud gave her a jerk to let her know who was boss. "Say, where'd you git that kid?" he ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... With an impatient jerk after the manner of Capitola, Clara signified that she did not wish to converse. Wool dropped obediently behind, mounted his horse and followed at a respectful distance until Clara turned her horse's head and took the bridle-path toward Tip Top. This move filled poor ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... getting abused all the way into the bargain. There Miller stands in the stern—and a devilish easy thing it is to stand there and walk into us—I can see him chuckle as he comes to you and me, Brown—'Now, 2, well forward;' '3, don't jerk;' 'Now 2, throw your weight on the oar; come, now, you can get another pound on.' I hang on like grim Death,—then ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... Manton," he said, by way of introduction. "An' my friend's called Sim Longley. Say," he went on, with a backward jerk of the head, "mebbe your friend'll ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... broad and as red as a pulpit cushion." On being shown into Flora's little parlour, she stood staring at her with her arms stuck in her sides, and her wide mouth distended from ear to ear, with a grin so truly uncouth and comic, that Mrs. Lyndsay could scarcely restrain her laughter; with a downward jerk of her broad shapeless person, meant for a curtsy, she burst out in a rude ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... should not be buckled tight about your waist, but should hang well down on the hip. This is for two reasons. In the first place, it does not drag so heavily at your anatomy, and falls naturally into position when you are mounted. In the second place, you can jerk your gun out more easily from a loose-hanging holster. Let your knife-sheath be so deep as almost to cover the handle, and the knife of the very best steel procurable. I like a thin blade. If you are a student of animal anatomy, you can skin and quarter a deer ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... young woman of spirit and ready presence of mind. With a swift jerk she dragged the slippery blade from the man's hands. She pulled it towards her beyond the man's reach. Then with a sudden vigorous thrust she drove the blade into the face of the nearest sailor. It took him full in the mouth and knocked him backwards. He picked himself up and spat out ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... Dick gave it a gentle pull—-not too hard, for fear the jerk might catch good old Dave of his guard and yank ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... had been dozing in his chair. He rose at the cry, looking hard, with a mechanical jerk of the neck, at two or three successive faces, and calling, "Somebody—somebody" to take his outstretched hand trembling in a paroxysm of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... muttered. "We are kind o' starved that way I'll admit. More dollars than girls to the square mile. And to think of all of us nice, healthy, young—bet yu' I know who she is!" he triumphantly cried. He had sat up and levelled a finger at me with the throw-down jerk ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... remembered the immense stores of Dutch lager beer which they had so providentially and so patriotically held in anticipation of the hour of need. Dutch beer, both light and dark, so that inveterate drinkers of Munich and Pilsener were enabled to face Armageddon almost without a jerk. They had other things ready too—Danish pate de fois gras, Swiss liver sausages, Belgian pastries and the rest. It was in that dark hour, I suppose, that the Vienna steak set its face towards the steppes. But this was in 1914, and a good deal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... parasol out of your hands and puts it up with a jerk; you take it, heaving a very loud sigh, upon which your mother seizes it again and pops ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... slowly advancing tentacle, coming closer and closer toward his nose, with an expression of such intense horror on his countenance that it became quite shocking. Farther and farther the creature reached forward, until on a sudden, with a sort of jerk, the movement assumed a downward direction, and the tentacle was slowly lowered until the tip rested on the stem of the pipe. For a moment the creature remained motionless. I was quieting my nerves with the reflection ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... and, kicking back his chair, rose from the table. He moved a pace away as though to go to the side-table where the whisky and soda stood. I thought he meant having a drink. His back was turned to me. The next moment I heard shots. He seemed to stumble, swung round with a sort of jerk, and fell face downward ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... energy in reserve to scramble on and upward into the seat. Once there, he kicked the animal in the flanks with both heels, clutching with his knees and reaching for the bridle rein in the same motion. The horse plunged obediently, but came to a stop with a jerk that almost unseated the rider; the sapling swayed; the good but forgotten ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... round face was congested with murderous rage before he had finished, but Steve seemed hardly to have heard him at all. He had finally straightened out that sickeningly slack figure upon his own bunk. He was listening now to his heart, and at a jerk of his head Fat Joe joined him at the bedside. The latter's thick fingers were as delicate, as competent, as a skilled physician's might have been. He, too, listened and peeled back the unconscious man's eyelids. He shook ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... who suddenly threw up his arms and then began to beat the surface wildly, but only for a second or two, before with a couple of sharp jerks he was dragged under water, while another cry from the savage nearest to the shore gave warning that his was to be a similar fate, one jerk, however, sufficing to drag him under, just as his companions reached the shelter ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... personal tragedy or world-agony, will prevail over the old order which dominated the nations of Europe, and the old philosophy of political and social governance will be challenged and perhaps overthrown. If the new ideas are thwarted by reactionary rulers endeavoring to jerk the world back to its old-fashioned discipline under their authority, there will be anarchy reaching to the heights of terror in more countries than those where anarchy now prevails. If by fear or by wisdom the new ideas are allowed to gain their ground gradually, a revolution will be accomplished ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... the branches, with a good deal of the upper part of his body under water, and when at length he emerged there was a big, gleaming fish in one hand. Ida saw him jerk its head back, with his fingers in its gills, and then, standing upright, he hurled it ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... held up her hand and with a jerk she was pulled to the top of the wall, but by no means did she "hush up." She writhed and twisted and screamed, but there was a difference now—a note of pain and terror ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... the car moved on with a jerk, the girl sinking back into her corner with a suggestion of breathlessness, as though her effort to seem composed had been almost ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... what happened. There I was found, sure enough; and there I made my first escape from destruction. Seeing the basket, which it seems was one in which he had brought his own dinner, the day before, and forgotten to carry away with him, he gave it a jerk to cast away the leavings, before he handed it to the child who had come to take it home, in order that it might be filled again, when out I rolled on the cold stone. There I lay, as near the grave as a tomb-stone, when I was just a ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... rather deaf, and very much frightened for fear he should talk Greek; on the other side he was relieved by Sir John Merton,—very civil, very pompous, and talking, at strictured intervals, about county matters, in a measured intonation, savouring of the House-of-Commons jerk at ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... horses were fitted out with packsaddles, to the latter part of which was fastened a pair of hobbles made of hickory withes,—a bell and collar ornamented their necks. The bags provided for the conveyance of the salt were filled with bread, jerk, boiled ham, and cheese furnished a provision for the drivers. At night, after feeding, the horses, whether put in pasture or turned out into the woods, were hobbled and the bells were opened. The barter for salt and iron was made first ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... drowning a cascade of applause, and a bundle of old clothes, twitching nerves, liquid perspiration and grease paint hopped off the stage into the centre of the group. An electric bell trilled, the limelights shut off, with a jerk that made the eyes ache, a back-cloth soared aloft and another glided down into its place, the comedian took two, three, four calls, then vanished into a horde of dim figures scuttling about in ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... reach them. Drew and I gazed in silent wonder, our bodies jammed tightly into the cab-window, and our heads craned upward. We did not come back to earth until our ancient, earth-creeping conveyance brought up with a jerk, and we found ourselves in front of a gate marked "Ecole d'Aviation Militaire ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... nerve is divided, the most obvious result is "drop-foot"; the patient is unable to dorsiflex the foot and cannot lift his toes off the ground, so that in walking he is obliged to jerk the foot forwards and laterally. The loss of sensibility depends upon whether the nerve is divided above or below the origin of the large cutaneous branch which comes off just before it passes round the neck of the fibula. In course of time the foot becomes inverted ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... up, till horse and rider hung for a moment in the balance—a horse on two legs, standing erect with a white boy clinging to its back. They swayed for a moment; for two; for three. Then over they came. With a violent jerk of its head, the ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... thing was without the "we" and the "our." What a perfect phrase.... The hymn rolled on and she recognised that it was the tune she knew—the hard square tune she and Eve had called it—and Harriett used to mark time to it in jerks, a jerk to each syllable, with a twisted glove-finger tip just under the book ledge with her left hand, towards Miriam. But sung as these Germans sang it, it did not jerk at all. It did not sound like a "proclamation" or an order. It was... somehow... everyday. ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... the next Lesson, thus learnt, Presently upon your making him stop give him a good brisk jerk near his Flank, which will make him soon understand you. When he does it, cherish him; and see he does it comely, for to yerk out his hinder Legs, till his Forelegs be above Ground, is not graceful; or one Leg yerk't farther out than ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... which he glowed—of some high provocation. He was flushed, but he bore it as the ensign of his house; he was so admirably, vividly dressed, for the morning hour and for his journey, that he shone as with the armour of a knight; and the whole effect of him, from head to foot, with every jerk of his unconcern and every flash of his ease, was to call attention to his being utterly unshaken and knowing perfectly what he was about. It was at this happy pitch that he replied to the ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... his shoulder brought Freddie with a jerk troubled dreams. Derek was standing beside him. A tousled Derek, ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... happiness any boy may find By sailing boats upon the lake, if he is so inclined; The wind it drives them out to sea, he pulls them back, and then They jerk and struggle to be free—away they go again! They wibble-wobble as they sail, and sometimes they upset,— Of course he reaches out for them,—of ...
— Children of Our Town • Carolyn Wells
... acknowledgments, he saw the two persons in full retreat; the profane old scoundrel in the bottle-green limping and stumbling, yet bowling along at a wonderful rate, with many a jerk and reel, and the slender lady in black gliding away by his side into the inner ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... As the spokesman, I presented the case briefly and respectfully, and all would have gone well had not the hot blood of Adler risen at the wrong moment, when the captain was cautiously exploring the scent of the rejected food. With a sudden upward jerk he caused that official's nose to disappear momentarily in the dish, while he exploded in voluble German. The result was an instant rupture of diplomatic relations. Adler was put in the lock-up, but set fiee again immediately. He spent the ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... effort to gather up his wandering faculties and then he realized with a jerk that the face looking into his was that of the slaver. Making a supreme effort he sat up. ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... check and rear in the air again, and caught up just as the mare made a second bolt. As Dolly dashed around a bend, she stopped suddenly, stiff-legged. Lute saw her lover torn out of the saddle, his thigh-grip broken by the sudden jerk. Though he had lost his seat, he had not been thrown, and as the mare dashed on Lute saw him clinging to the side of the horse, a hand in the mane and a leg across the saddle. With a quick cavort he regained his seat and proceeded to fight ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... sought after. We talk with the foreman and make nuisances of ourselves generally, and presently old man Ayers, who runs the paper, waddles in with another item to be set. The compositors set down their sticks with a jerk and say, "Oh, my land!" and the foreman goes and puts the item on the case with that air of patient resignation which is a little more irritating than a swift kick; and then Chet Frazier, if he's hanging around, which he usually ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... rain-splashed pane. The world was empty now that Phil had gone. He drew down the shabby green blind with a jerk and prepared to ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... by a sidelong motion. I kept one some years ago, and had ample opportunity of studying his mode of defence. When a dog or any other foe comes to close quarters, the porcupine wheels round and rapidly charges back. They also have a side-way jerk ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... think so if you like," said Josh, and Will sent his stone flying with a tremendous jerk right away into the trees beyond ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... to the bureau and pulled open the top drawer with a jerk. Within lay Helen's paper. Polly picked it up. "April fool!" she read aloud. She looked into the drawer, then at Helen, her face brightening into a sudden smile with ...
— The Goody-Naughty Book • Sarah Cory Rippey
... snarl. He sucked up his breath in furious protest, threatening murder. But the stranger's hand was not withdrawn. On the contrary it advanced upon him with the utmost deliberation till Cinders was compelled to jerk backwards to ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... to take you in hand and make you a little ray of sunshine about the home. I know your type backwards. I've been in America and studied it on its native asphalt. You superfatted millionaire kids are all the same. If Dad doesn't jerk you into the office before you're out of knickerbockers, you just run to seed. You get to think you're the only thing on earth, and you go on thinking it till one day somebody comes along and shows you you're not, and then you get what's ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... kind had passed us, nor any human being, nor had we overtaken any. Dulcie, nestling close to me in the warm, comfortable brougham, was more than half asleep. I too felt drowsy, and I fear that more than once my chin had dropped forward with a jerk. Suddenly the car swerved abruptly to the right. So tightly were the brakes applied at the same instant that we were both thrown forward almost on to the floor. The car lurched, rose up on one side, then as I instinctively threw my arms about Dulcie to protect her if possible from what ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... however, that he who appeared to have hardly sufficient strength to support himself could not help me. This poor looking, feeble old man, however, took hold of me with one arm, and lifted me with a single jerk upon the horse so quick and so alertly that it ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... had the turquoises, and with a jerk of her left hand she freed it and threw them after the rest. The necklace caught the handrail as it fell, and Markin made a vain spring to save it. He turned and stared at Laura, who stood fighting the greatest puissance of feeling she had known, looking at the pearls. As he stared, she kissed ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... will you?" And the knight went to work at his papers, as though fearing that any delay in what he was doing might be very prejudicial to the nation at large. "Ah, Eames,—well,—yes," he said again, as he pushed away from him, almost with a jerk, the papers on which he had been writing. "They tell me that you know the business of ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... had not seen them, and still crouched down, expecting to hear the riders turn and come back. Hence it was like a surprise when I heard a faint rustling which indicated that Joeboy was getting up; and, warned by a jerk of the ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... advocated, Miss Priscilla gestured the putting forth of an abjuring hand, with the recommendation to him, so to put aside temptation that instant; and she signified in a very ugly jerk of her features, the vilely filthy stuff Morality thought it, however pleasing it might be to a palate corrupted by indulgence of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... not the odd thing that you should speak it to the only man in the shire that ever had the right to use it? Do you see this?" and rising he stepped to a recess in the wall, only half curtained, so that its contents overflowed into the chamber, and by a jerk of the hand revealed a strange accumulation of dusty documents in paper and in parchment. He looked at them with an aspect of disgust, and stirred them with a contemptuous toe as if he meddled with the ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... my head aside, put my hand in through the opening, felt about, and taking a firm hold on one arm of the skeleton, I loosened it from the body with a quick jerk. The movement loosened the head as well, and it rolled out through the opening right to my very feet. I took up the skull to lay it in the coffin again—and then I saw a greenish phosphorescent glimmer in its ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... he had pulled the barge about two hundred yards he stopped; the rope slackened and then the current pulled against us. The rope became taut again and the men shrieked from the barge. When you tug a boat, you must not jerk at the rope but pull it gently, so I urged Kari to pull it smoothly. In the course of an hour, he had actually drawn the boat in, and at the end of our journey he had learned to ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... victory and safety. The Manitou has reached him, and, with a fiend-like laugh on his horrid face, bends exultingly forward to seize his helpless victims. One hand he lays upon the tender arm of the forest-flower, the other is in the hair of the lover. But, as he bends forward, a sudden jerk of the Iroquois, occasioned by returning life, draws him unwittingly over the line which marks the boundaries of his kingdom and sway. In a moment—in a breath—ere the eye could have winked, or the spirit thought—multitudes of bright beings start up from each nook, and dell, and dingle—from ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... a state of siege horse-flesh is all right—the French eat frogs, you know, and horses have frogs in their feet. What I like about the thing in Paris, though, is that they call it horse-flesh, and don't try to jerk it on a fellow for beef. Jerked beef is bad enough, but only think of jerked horse, by ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... hands for half a day. Our gang laid out on the mizen topsail yard, and after more than half an hour's hard work, furled the sail, though it bellied out over our heads, and again, by a slant of the wind, blew in under the yard, with a fearful jerk, and almost threw us off ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... together intermittently in subdued tones, that barely reached aft in the form of a low mumble; and the only sounds heard were the occasional soft rustle and flap of the canvas aloft, with an accompanying patter of reef-points, the jar of the rudder upon its pintles, the jerk of the wheel chains, and the soft, scarcely audible seething of the ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... to blame for it, if he is blind, is he?" chattered the boy, a bit incoherently. "If you're blind you're blind, and you can't help yourself." And with a jerk he freed himself from Mazie's grasp and hurried down ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... and Talbot, in Titchener's laboratory at Cornell University, found that the estimation of relative weights was aided by music.[99] Lombard found, when investigating the normal variations in the knee-jerk, that involuntary reflex processes are always reinforced by music; a military band playing a lively march caused the knee-jerk to increase at the loud passages and to diminish at the soft passages, while remaining ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... ours, tend to weaken themselves, and thus it was that the men began to exhibit the effects of severe and unremitting toil. Our daily journeys were short, and the head we made against the stream but trifling. The men lost the proper and muscular jerk with which they once made the waters foam and the oars bend. Their whole bodies swung with an awkward and laboured motion. Their arms appeared to be nerveless; their faces became haggard, their persons emaciated, their spirits wholly sunk; nature was so completely overcome, that from ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... both occasions, I offered him a rupee to produce a third, which he agreed to; and this time I saw the snake's head, struggling rather oddly in his nether garments. He ran into the horse's stall, rushed forward with a shriek to distract attention, and then I saw him jerk out a snake of some four feet long, and drag it backwards by the tip of the tail as if desperately afraid of it. Knowing his snakes must be an exhaustible quantity, I proffered a second rupee for another, taking care to keep between him ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... than a fathom of water here, sir," sang out Johnson from the bows. As he spoke there was a sudden soft jar and jerk, then the schooner was still. They were aground. "Push her off to the lee there! Let go your sheets!" roared the boatswain from the wheel. "Push her off to the lee." He spun the wheel around as he spoke. A ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... the rich, gentle voice of the Altrurian. I lifted my head with a jerk from the pillow, and saw him standing against the closed door, with my shoes in his hand. "Oh, I am sorry I ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... angry jerk forward and the cart went terribly fast and Doorke clutched Horieneke with one hand and with the other warded off the hanging ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... was not altogether absurd. And yet—love didn't come like that, in a flash. You might just as well expect a house to spring into being in a moment, or a ship, or an automobile, or a table, or a—He sat up with a jerk. In another instant, he ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... mind snapped sharply to attention. His startled jerk threw the ship widely from her course. A voice was speaking—Chet's voice! It was shouting in ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... of laughter came from Quisante's group; he had made some joke and they all applauded him. Tillman stood for a moment longer before him, then gave a queer jerk of his head, and turned sharp round on his heel. He came back towards where she stood. She took a step forward and thus crossed his path, Marchmont and the Dean standing on ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... what had happened, he demanded that the murderer be given up to him. His demand was readily granted, whereupon the white man advanced on the cowering wretch, who had confidently expected the protection of his people, and with the quick fling and jerk of a raw-hide rope bound his arms to his side. Then casting a noose about his neck and tying the end of it to his saddle-bow, he set off for the Hudson. All that night he rode, the Indian walking and running at the horse's heels, and next day ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... worked, Grace recovered some of her self-possession. She did not dare to cry out, and tried to think of some other method of arousing the others on the boat. Her eyes fell upon a bell pull hanging from the wall and, on the sly, she gave it a violent jerk. ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... fish at all. The official photographer, who had gone solely to take snapshots, also took the maximum of fish out of the river. Indeed, he was so much of an amateur that the first fish he caught placed him in such a predicament that he did not play it, but landed it with so vigorous a jerk that it flew over his head and caught high in a fir. An Indian guide had to climb ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... through the air; and the loop glided swiftly over the great head and tightened suddenly around the hairy neck, just at the moment the bear came to the decision to charge Thure and sprang toward him, with the result that the sudden unexpectedness of the jerk of Bud's rope yanked him off his feet and hurled ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... hang them, manning the rope by which the condemned were swayed to the yardarm. The admiral, careful to produce impression, ordered that all the ships should hold divine service immediately upon the execution. Accordingly, when the bell struck eight, the fatal gun was fired, the bodies swung with a jerk aloft, the church flags were hoisted throughout the fleet, and all went to prayers. Ere yet the ceremony was over, the Spanish gunboats came out from Cadiz and opened fire; but St. Vincent would not mar the solemnity of the occasion by shortening ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... her cheer a jerk Ez though she wished him furder, An' on her apples kep' to work, ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... soir, bonne nuit,' just as though Rogers had never gone away at all. Michaud, the carpenter, shouted his welcome as he strolled towards the Post Office farther down to post a letter, and then the motor stopped with a jerk outside the courtyard where the fountain sang and gurgled in its big stone basin. Minks saw the plane tree. He glanced up at the ridged backbone of the building. What a portentous looking erection it was. It seemed to have no windows. He wondered where the famous Den was. The roof overlapped ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... from the midst of which shoot up two long feathers, one green and one red, while behind hangs down a greasy, floury mass gathered at the end into a club-like handle, which has some fitness for its place, in suggesting that it should be used to jerk the heap of hair, grease, and feathers from the head of the unfortunate who sustains it. Just think of it! that sweet creature must have given up at least two hours of every day to this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... small ones who fled hand in hand until one stumbled and the burning lash caught them both as the other strove to pull the fallen to its feet. Raf gagged. He triggered the controls and soared up and away, fighting the heaving in his middle, shaking off with one savage jerk the insistent pawing hand of the alien who wanted to ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... doves over there," he said reproachfully, a jerk of his bulbous thumb indicating Madame de Vaurigard and her young protege. "Madge, can't you do nothin' fer our friend the Indian? Can't you even help ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... grizzly old man at the helm carrying his craft with strange skill through the turmoil of waters, and the boy, supple-limbed, yet weather-worn already, and with steady eyes that look through the blast, you see him understanding commandments from the jerk of his father’s white eyebrow, now belaying and now letting go, now scrunching himself down into mere ballast, or baling out death with a pipkin. Stale enough is the sight, and yet when I see it I always stare anew, and with a kind of Titanic exultation, because that a poor ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... Then kneeling down at the fountain, he quickly splashed the water into his face and eyes, ran one finger from his forehead to the crown of his head in order to part his disordered locks, pulled away a loose straw from behind his neck, gave his tumbled tunic one jerk to straighten it, and, with the air of a person who had made an elaborate toilet, and could afford to be well satisfied with the result, presented himself ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... the uttermost. You would think, perhaps, pitifully, that not much pleasure or warmth would ever go down so low, within her reach. Now that she stood on the ground, she scarcely came up to the level of the wheel; some deformity of her legs made her walk with a curious rolling jerk, very comical to see. She laughed at it, when other people did; if it vexed her at all, she never showed it. She had turned back her calico sun-bonnet, and stood looking up at Mrs. Howth and Joel, laughing as they talked—with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... lowered to the required depth, a sharp jerk is then given to the suspending cord, which detaches the rubber tube and so opens the two glass tubes. Water enters through the longer tube and the air is expelled through the shorter tube. The bubbles of air can be seen or heard rising through the water, until the bottle is nearly full, ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... whatever it was, her revery was suddenly disturbed, and the good nature that beamed from her face dispelled, by the noisy clattering of more than one pair of little boots on the stairs. In a moment, the door opened with a jerk and a push, and in bounded three boys, with as little display of manners or propriety as so many savages might exhibit. The oldest directed his steps to the closet, singing, as he peered ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... to attention. His startled jerk threw the ship widely from her course. A voice was speaking—Chet's voice! It was shouting ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... out of the elevator, I behind the others, Kite caught my attention with a low whistle, and in response to a furtive, beckoning, backward jerk of his head, I moved over to the desk. The reading gentlemen in the easy chairs, most consciously unconscious of us, sent blue smoke circles above their papers. Kite leaned far over to get his mustache closer to ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... better English translation.] was not only a learned critic but a great one: and this mass of him—cast with seeming carelessness, just here, into the scales—does give the reader, as with a jerk, the sensation that Hazlitt has, of his rashness, invited that which suddenly throws him up in the air to kick the beam: that he has provoked a comparison which exhibits his own performance ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... as mine, and more so,' I replied, rising with a jerk, for a spasm of cramp took me. 'We must separate,' I added, as we walked on. 'We want, at one stroke, to prove to them that we're harmless, and to get a fresh start. ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... the event of a cross compound beginning to jerk badly and cylinder head pops in low-pressure cylinder popping, where would ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous
... an hour's delay, but a liberal application of sand to the rails helped them out. Five miles later on the locomotive began to puff and jerk. With full steam on, the engine did ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... downstairs shouting madly. No one answered. In the vestibule I met the negro; I seized him by the collar and demanded my room. The demon showed his white and awful teeth, which were filed into a saw-like shape, and extricating himself from my grasp with a sudden jerk, fled down the passage with a gibbering laugh. Nothing but echo answered to my despairing shrieks. The lonely garden resounded with my cries as I strode madly through the dark walls, and the tall funereal ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... Came a jerk, a long and dragging resistance, then a terrific straining on the many cords. The score and a half of men breathed hard; on their naked arms the veins and muscles swelled; the torchlight gleamed blue on ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... to an end Quite silently—stopped without jerk; Better close no prevision could lend; Working out as One planned it should work Ere it ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... to the quick. A most disagreeable sight it is, to see the blood and yellow fat oozing out in the broiling sun from these great punctures! Our elephant was an excellent one, when he did not take obstinate fits, and so docile as to pick up pieces of stone when desired, and with a jerk of the trunk throw them over his head for the rider to catch, thus saving the trouble ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... "Wedding March" at the double. The clarionet (or clarinet) wipes the tears from his eyes and puts a sob in his rendering; the cornet unswallows his mouthpiece and, getting his under-jaw well jutted out, decides to put a jerk in it; the piccolo pickles with furious enthusiasm; the 'cello puts his instrument in top-gear with his left hand and saws away violently with the other; the triangle, who has fallen perhaps into a Euclidian ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... was drifting the air-ship toward the Eiffel Tower; the navigator had lost control; 500 feet below were the roofs of the Trocadero Hotels; he had to decide which was the least dangerous; there was but a moment to think. Santos-Dumont, death staring him in the face, chose the roofs. A swift jerk of a cord, and a big slit was made in the balloon. Instantly man, motor, gas-bag, and keel went tumbling down straight into the court of the hotels. The great balloon burst with a noise like an explosion, ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... "Keep hold of the stick-end, or tie that end to the boat. If you lose that you can't pull in your crab. Each one of you keep watch of his or her string. When you see it beginning to be pulled, or when you feel a little tug or jerk on it, as if a fish were nibbling, then pull up very slowly and carefully. And look as you pull. Don't pull it all the way to the top, or the crab, if there is one on it, will see you, ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cousin Tom's • Laura Lee Hope
... in the crowd reached up and caught him by the ankles, and with a quick jerk pulled him off the box, and threw him on to the street. But he was up on his knees in a moment, and ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... Paleologus himself was down by the shore directing the preparations. Some of his best troops were placed upon the floating bridge, and, when all was ready, the order was given to pull upon the rope. No sooner, however, did the strain come upon it than there was a jerk, the rope slackened, and it was at once evident that the anchor had been discovered and the well laid plan disconcerted. Paleologus was furious, but, believing that the attack he had arranged would still be irresistible, he ordered a number of boats ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... agen, up at Kit's," remarked Eli, finishing his stroke with a jerk, and speaking for the general benefit, though the words were particularly ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... brake on the line tightened, the boat began to tear through the water, still requiring the paying out of the rope. For an instant it slackened and the winch reeled in a little line. There was a sudden jerk and then the line fell slack. Working like demons, the men made the winch handles fairly fly as the line came in, and within another minute the whale spouted, blowing strongly and sounding again. ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... a jerk that pitched me out of my seat, and the chauffeur leaped to the road and ran ahead. Smith was out in a trice, as the man, who had run up to a constable, ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... backward and forward along the abyss, like a bear in his cage, seeking a passage everywhere and finding none; then, with a furious jerk, he tore up an immense oak by the roots and flung it across the gap. The branches of the oak nearly crushed the children as it fell. The giant seated himself astride the huge tree, which bent under his weight, and crept slowly along, suspended between heaven and earth, entangled ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... seemed very still and lonesome. Some chickens were rolling in the dust by the gate, and scattered, cackling indignantly, when they rode up. Off to the left a colt whinnied wistfully in a corral. Beatrice, riding listlessly to the house, stopped her horse with a jerk. ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... in Egypt: and already she regarded my friend as a ram caught in the bushes, for a sacrifice on her altar. Instead of screening him I had dragged him in front of the footlights. But fortunately there was still time to jerk down the curtain. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... Moya to her feet with a jerk. "My goodness! Who will you pick up next? Now walk along to ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... notched peg is next driven into the ground and the top of the pole caught in it, and thus held in a bent position. When the animal is caught, its struggles release the pole, and the latter, flying up with a jerk, [Page 145] lifts the trap and its occupant high in the air, out of the reach of marauders, and beyond the power of escape by self-amputation. Even in the capture of large game the spring pole often serves to good purpose. The struggles of a heavy ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... was willing to forego the honorable title of "Papa," and could not help feeling a decided preference for the simple name of Briest, if for no other reason, because it was so beautifully short. "And then as for the children," he said—at which word he had to give himself a jerk as he exchanged gazes with Innstetten, who was only about a dozen years his junior—"well, let Effi just remain Effi, and Geert, Geert. Geert, if I am not mistaken, signifies a tall and slender trunk, and so Effi may be the ivy destined to twine about it." At these words the betrothed ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... when he was suddenly startled by a hissing noise at his ear, and what seemed to be the uncoiling stroke of a leaping serpent at his side. Instinctively he threw himself forward on his horse's neck, and as the animal shied into the grain, felt the crawling scrape and jerk of a horsehair lariat across his back and down his horse's flanks. He reined in indignantly and stood up in his stirrups. Nothing was to be seen above the level of the grain. Beneath him the trailing riata had as noiselessly vanished as if it had been ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... around. His fierce little eyes seemed to take in every move of his tormentors. He saw both boys (for Mark, too, had reached his gun) spreading out on either hand to get in fatal shots if they could. Meanwhile Washington White stood on the line close to the peg in the ice so that the beast could not jerk free. ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... that man to be killed! Scouts don't do that," and Rod straightened himself up with a jerk. ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... baggage was on the floor, but one fairly heavy valise was in the rack over Yussuf Dakmar's head. Jeremy got up to examine it when the pistol had ceased to amuse him, and taking advantage of a jerk as the train slowed down, contrived to drop it into the Syrian's lap; who rather naturally swore; whereat Jeremy took offence, and accused him of being a descendant of Hanna, son of Manna, who lived for a thousand and one years and never ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... had a crowd; the Chicken held on. "A knife!" cried Bob; and a cobbler gave him his knife; you know the kind of knife, worn away obliquely to a point, and always keen. I put its edge to the tense leather; it ran before it; and then!—one sudden jerk of that enormous head, a sort of dirty mist about his mouth, no noise, and the bright and fierce little fellow is dropped, limp, and dead. A solemn pause; this was more than any of us had bargained for. I turned the ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... day of the inauguration of the statue of a certain Monsieur Valbonnans, a former deputy and celebrated glove manufacturer,—also the glory of the country,—Vaudrey heard the soldier murmur from morning till night, with a movement of his jaw that made his imperial jerk: "I love bronze! I love bronze!" with a persistency that ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... the footpath and make my way back to the "Brand," as I might well have done, by a more circuitous route. I kept on the footpath, and just as I reached the little iron gate which led into the spinney, I felt a man's arm suddenly flung around my neck, and with a jerk I was thrown almost off ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... wounding a few men, but beyond this we met with no molestation. The torpedoes were loaded shells planted on each side of the road, and so connected by wires attached to friction-tubes in the shells, that when a horse's hoof struck a wire the shell was exploded by the jerk on the improvised lanyard. After the loss of several horses and the wounding of some of the men by these torpedoes, I gave directions to have them removed, if practicable, so about twenty-five of the prisoners were brought up and ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... plan, as yet, the deliberate malice in which her brother and sister took their chief pleasure. Unfortunately, Wilfred arrived at the end of Africa at the wrong moment for her. He pushed the atlas away from him with a jerk that overturned the ink bottle, sending a stream of ink towards Avice—who, shoving her chair backwards to escape the deluge, cannoned into Queenie, and brought her headlong to the floor. Howls broke out anew, mingled with a crisp interchange of abuse ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... asked Picard, with a jerk of his head toward Breitmann, who was being carefully lifted on ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... going some, too. He couldn't cover the ground fast enough. When the division superintendents decided to send the overland back over the way it had come, then up on a cross "jerk" to the Oregon Short Line, and back along that road to tap the Union Pacific the other side of the wreck, that boy climbed upon the pilot and said he was going to stay with it. This was too much for the Swede and ...
— The Road • Jack London
... "African Travels," do not shake your head despondingly over him and prophesy evil issues. Let the wild hawk try its wings. It will be hooded, and will sit quietly enough on the falconer's perch ere long. Let the wild horse career over its boundless pampas; the jerk of the lasso will bring it down soon enough. Soon enough will the snaffle in the mouth and the spur of the tamer subdue the high spirit to the bridle, or the carriage-trace. Perhaps not; and, if so, the better for all parties. Once more there will be a new man and new ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... raise a rifle—where he got it no one knows—take aim, and shoot. It was all done so quickly that I could scarcely move. Hal always held his revolver ready to enforce obedience from his men, and the moment I heard the shot I saw his arm jerk spasmodically and his revolver fly out and fall in the bottom of the canoe. At the same time I tore my revolver out of my belt and covered ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... suppose, have experienced in a momentary and partial degree a sudden stoppage of the apparatus of memory. You are asked, let us say, to spell "parallelogram." In an ordinary way you could do it on your head or in your sleep; but the sudden demand gives you a mental jerk that makes the wretched word a hopeless chaos of r's and l's, and the more you try to sort them out the less convincing do they seem. Or walking with a friend you meet at a turn in the street that excellent woman, Mrs. Orpington-Smith. You know her as well as you know your own mother, ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... be too wide or sweeping, but sharp, short motions, finished with a jerk or quick catch. The hands should, as far as possible, be kept in the line of attack. Parries against butt strike are made by quickly moving the guard so as ...
— Infantry Drill Regulations, United States Army, 1911 - Corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes Nos. 1 to 19) • United States War Department
... suddenly from behind a rock, and presented a rifle. He was so close to Aiken that the rifle almost struck him in the face. Aiken threw up his hands, and fell back with such a jerk that he lost his balance, and would have fallen had he not pitched forward and clasped the mule around the neck. I pulled my mule to a halt, and held my hands as high as I could raise them. The man moved his rifle from side to side so as to cover each of us in turn, ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... Uncle Sam. To move the great big mountain Will take a million men. So come on with your tooth picks And bring your fountain pen. Go easy, don't jerk; We gotta make work. It'll take more moons If we use small spoons To move that great ...
— Class of '29 • Orrie Lashin and Milo Hastings
... were overwhelming him. Only a sudden jerk of the head, a dozen determined, silent men hanging to him, saved Morgan's neck from the flung rope. The man who cast it cursed; was drawing it back with eager haste to throw again, when Rhetta ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... now and then some church bell in the town rang clearly and sharply above the tumult. The thin films of dust, yellow in the evening sun, hovered like golden smoke under the station roof. At last with a reluctant jerk and shiver the train was slowly persuaded to totter into the evening air; the evening scents were again around us, the balalaika, now upon the train, hummed behind us, as we pushed out upon her last ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... cannot recollect him after so many years." He was a dark, large-whiskered man, with a far from pleasant expression of countenance. The ship had been on the station some time, and rather worse for wear and tear. We had not been on board long, when one night as I was in my hammock I felt it jerk in a peculiar manner, and was almost sent out of it. I was quickly roused by a combination of all conceivable sounds:— the howling of the wind, the roar of the seas, which seemed to be dashing over us. ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... records are not destitute of cases. When they occur, it is as the result of external violence, the sufferers being usually run-aways which have come in collision with a wall or a tree or other obstruction, or it may occur in those which in pulling upon the halter have broken it with a jerk and been thrown backward, as may occur in rearing too violently. Under these conditions we have witnessed fractures of the parietal, of the frontal, and of the sphenoid bones. These fractures may be of both the complete and the incomplete ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... that her lover had disappeared and that she should then and there see him. She was farther instructed how to act. The conjuror warned her from going into the ring, but told her to seize her lover by the arm as he danced round, and to jerk him out of the enchanted circle. Twelve months and a day passed away, and the faithful girl was on the spot where she lost her lover. At the very moment that they had in the first instance appeared the Fairies again came to view, and everything that she had witnessed previously was repeated. ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... section of her port rail gone, a great dent in the steel deck-house forward, began to climb over the water hills with much of her usual precision—down on her side, clear to the bottom of a hollow, then settling on an even keel with a jerk, climbing the slaty incline, stiff as a church, then down, down, half on her side again, ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... felt for the lever.... A jerk ... a swing ... and whirling, as if driven by supernatural force, the wheel ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... give them a chance!" insisted Elmer. "We're going to jerk those boys out so quick ...
— Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns • Major Archibald Lee Fletcher
... a conceited driver, who sets out with a plunge, and continues his course with a prolonged crash, as though the fate of empires reposed in his mail-bags. You come to a ditch; you go in with a plunge, and come out with a jerk. Your head hits the back of the hood when you go in, your nose hits the back of the driver when you come out. A rut in the road causes one wheel to descend suddenly about eighteen inches; or an unavoidable ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... volume of water grows hotter for an hour. When it is too hot to absorb the steam, and the tube is too narrow to let the amount made bubble up through the water, it lifts the whole mass with a sudden jerk. The instant the pressure of the water is taken off in any degree, the water below, that was kept water by the pressure, breaks into steam most voluminously, and the measureless power floods the earth and ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... the horse races, and when Morris climbed into the tonneau he paid little attention to Abe's instructions, so busy was he glancing around him for prying credit men. At length, with a final jar and jerk the machine sprang forward, and for the rest of the journey Morris' mind was emptied of every other apprehension save that engendered of passing trucks or street cars. Finally, the machine drew up in front of the Prince William and Morris scrambled out, trembling in every limb. He made at once ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... worst of it," said Mr Solace, with an annoyed jerk of his head. "I should like him to stop too. He's such a clever rascal with his head as well as his hands. A hint does for him, where another man wants telling all the ins and outs of a thing, and doesn't get ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... overalls, he mounted the brown, a splendid sixteen-hands horse in tip-top condition, and again made for the field in all the pride of masterly equestrianism. A momentary gleam of sunshine shot o'er the scene; a jerk of the head acted as a signal to throw off, and away they all moved from ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... tightening the loop just enough to leave an easy passage through it for the needle. The end of the thread must be held by the thumb and forefinger. The next stitches are made by taking up the thread with the needle and drawing it through the loop. The throwing of the thread round the needle by a jerk of the wrist ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... cried Miss Nipper, taking up her words with a jerk, "Don't! See her dear papa, indeed! I should like to see her do it! Her pa's a deal too wrapped up in somebody else; and before there was somebody else to be wrapped up in, she never was a favorite. Girls are thrown away in this house, I ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... extraordinary Wit, but of loose Principles and immoral Lives, who above all others affect Popularity and gasp after Applause, take so much Pleasure, without the least regard to Modesty and Decency, in a Christian Country to mock Religion and jerk with spiteful Satire Men of Vertue and ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore
... might have been more tedious if it had been less damp, for a boy is seldom bored by anything that involves his staying-out in the rain without protection. The drizzle had thickened; the leaves were heavy with water, and at every jerk the branches sent fat drops over the two collectors. They attained a noteworthy state ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... seized it and gave it a violent jerk; another caught the mule's bridle; a third pulled the revolvers from the holsters; a fourth snatched the rifle from across the saddle; while a fifth, for a climax, dealt Will a blow on the head with a ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... began to seize on his heart. He ground his teeth; he set his knee against the horizontal projection of the window; and that freed his left hand; he suddenly seized her arm with it, and, clutching it violently, ground his teeth together, and, throwing himself backward with a jerk, tore her out of the water by an effort almost superhuman. Such was the force exerted by the torrent on one side, and the desperate lover on the other, that not her shoes only, but her stockings, though gartered, were torn off her in that ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... and many are the gestures which I recall of the whip-hand towards the pavement, accompanied by the remark (in effect), "Lumme, what funny things a bloke do see!" I confess freely that often I should entirely miss, but for the observant jerk of the whip, the said "funny thing"; and it is just that service which the friendly busman renders to me, as it appears to my mind, that Frank Reynolds performs for the community at large. It is precisely those commonplace "funny things," whether they be persons, scenes, ...
— Frank Reynolds, R.I. • A.E. Johnson
... as their keen eyes and shrewd faces and low-voiced exchange of such terms as "stocks," and "sales" and "propositions" proclaimed them intent on bagging the day's business. Sam Hupp's next words brought him back to reality with a jerk. ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... the best wine: they go together. Could ever an Anglo-Saxon have built that, think you?" demanded Brother Copas with a backward jerk of the head and glance up at the vaulted roof. "But to my moral.—All this talk of Anglo-Saxons, Celts, and the rest is rubbish. We are English by chemical action of a score of interfused bloods. That man is a fool who speaks as though, at this point of time, they ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... coming interview, Captain Carey studied her imperious back and shoulders, the haughty poise of her head; and though he was not the one that had behaved badly, he had never felt so small. At the door of the morning-room she dismissed him with a jerk of the hand. "You know your way," ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... is a deadly determination and deliberation in every movement that he makes. WILL jumps to his feet and looks at him. The revolver is uplifted in the air, as a Western man handles a gun, so that when it is snapped down with a jerk the deadly shot can be fired. LAURA is terror-stricken, but before the shot is fired she takes a step forward and extends one hand in a gesture ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... proceed to work upon the violin. In general condition it happens to be very good, the one opening referred to being the time at which the modern bar had been attached in place of the very old and small-sized one. The fingerboard being old is easily removed by a sudden pull or jerk. After further cleaning with the aid of a hog-hair brush, this being adapted for getting more completely into the corners, both parts of the violin—they have both had a cleaning and looks more ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... pull you down!" cried I, springing forward: indignation giving me strength, I seized, and with one jerk pulled the Colossus forward and ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... are at the top," said the blacksmith, "you will loosen a stone and drop it on the head of one of your friends yonder"—indicating the courtyard with a jerk of his head. "That will settle him. At the same moment I'll overwhelm the other. We must prevent them firing at any costs. But don't miss him, whatever you do, or we are worse ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... annoyed and, indicating with a jerk of his chin the public who filled the entrance hall—a herd of men with parched lips and ardent eyes, still burning with the enjoyment of ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... explain how or why it happened. But in the middle of the night, all the animals did leave Silly Will. Not only the cow and the sheep and the horse but all the animal kingdom! He was sound asleep in his flannel nightgown snuggled under warm wool blankets. Suddenly he felt a jerk. What was happening? He sat up in bed just in time to see his blankets whisk off him and disappear. He looked down. His night shirt was gone! He heard a faint sound almost like the bleating of the old woman's sheep. "Ba-ba-a-a I ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... One jerk, and there a lady lay, A lady wondrous fair; But the rose of her lip had faded away, And her cheek was as white and as cold as clay, And torn was her raven hair. "Ah ha!" said the Fisher, in merry guise, ...
— English Satires • Various
... news with an indifference from which it blankly rebounded. He buried one bare foot in the soft white sand and withdrew it with a jerk that powdered the blackberry vines beside ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... off. Red hair flashed into view, tousled and disordered: and, as she saw it, Sally uttered an involuntary gasp of astonishment which caused many eyes to turn towards her. And the red-headed young man, who had been stooping to pick up his gloves, straightened himself with a jerk and stood staring at her blankly and incredulously, his ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... but a great deal of something sweeter, joy—joy that thrilled and vibrated through every nerve within him. Leaning against the portal, in an absurd delirium of delight—for it takes but a trifle to jerk those lovers from the slimiest depths of the Slough of Despond to the topmost peak of the mountain of ecstasy—he uncovered his head that the night-air might cool its feverish throbbings. But the night-air was as hot as his heart; and, almost suffocated ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... chain, some inattentiveness, some want of care, my ill-luck, in short, led me to set it down in unstable equilibrium on the edge of the desk. It tumbled-I heard the little chain rattle-it tumbled farther-then stopped short. The mischief was done. The sudden jerk, as it pulled up, had detached an enormous drop of ink from the point of the pen, and that drop—Ah! I can see him yet, as he rose from the shadow of the desk, that small, white-haired man, so thin ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... head an uneasy jerk, and his hand played about his neck and the back of his right ear for a few moments, as if something troubled him. But it passed off directly, and he looked from one to the other again as he took a chair, turned it, and supported himself by ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... active. Fin', to find. Fissle, tingle, fidget with delight. Fit, foot. Fittie-lan', the near horse of the hind-most pair in the plough. Flae, a flea. Flaffin, flapping. Flainin, flannen, flannel. Flang, flung. Flee, to fly. Fleech, wheedle. Fleesh, fleece. Fleg, scare, blow, jerk. Fleth'rin, flattering. Flewit, a sharp lash. Fley, to scare. Flichterin, fluttering. Flinders, shreds, broken pieces. Flinging, kicking out in dancing; capering. Flingin-tree, a piece of timber ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... useless, to be the architect of the irrevocable past. Meanwhile, and behind all this activity, brute terrors, like the scurrying of rats in a deserted attic, filled the more remote chambers of his brain with riot; the hand of the constable would fall heavy on his shoulder, and his nerves would jerk like a hooked fish; or he beheld, in galloping defile, the dock, the prison, the gallows, and the black coffin. Terror of the people in the street sat down before his mind like a besieging army. It was impossible, he thought, but that some rumor of the struggle must ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... occasionally caught a fine word from his associates, and used it a little vaguely), "that only one ever got back to his village, and he came into his wigwam limping. Luckily, as it turned out, the great Delaware had only halted to jerk some venison, and was following on my trail; and when he got up he had five of the scoundrels' scalps hanging where they ought to be; so, you see, nothing was lost by doing right, either in the way of honor or in that ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... read it. When she had left her home this afternoon, she had struggled hard to dress herself so that something of the charm of apparel might be left to her; but she had known of her own failure at every twist that she had given to her gown, and at every jerk with which she had settled her shawl. She had despaired at every push she had given to her old flowers, vainly striving to bring them back to their old forms; but still she had persevered. With long tedious care she had mended the old gloves which would hardly hold her fingers. She had carefully ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... they had so providentially and so patriotically held in anticipation of the hour of need. Dutch beer, both light and dark, so that inveterate drinkers of Munich and Pilsener were enabled to face Armageddon almost without a jerk. They had other things ready too—Danish pate de fois gras, Swiss liver sausages, Belgian pastries and the rest. It was in that dark hour, I suppose, that the Vienna steak set its face towards the steppes. But ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... fellow who's going to take you in hand and make you a little ray of sunshine about the home. I know your type backwards. I've been in America and studied it on its native asphalt. You superfatted millionaire kids are all the same. If Dad doesn't jerk you into the office before you're out of knickerbockers, you just run to seed. You get to think you're the only thing on earth, and you go on thinking it till one day somebody comes along and shows you you're not, and then you get what's ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... and, saying to May: "Now, brace yourself for a mighty push," she used the handle as a lever, gave a vigorous jerk, when away went bolt, window, Marie and all. Down she came with a thud, but, luckily, on a pile of sweeping cloths, which saved ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... finished he gave an impatient jerk to the carriage door, a movement which, like all his gestures, sprang from the nervous energy that found its outlet in the magnetism of his personality. People sometimes said that he resembled Perry Bridewell, ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... Camp 52 R all day, to cut up and jerk the meat of the horse Billy, who was so reduced and knocked up for want of food that there appeared little chance of his reaching the other side of the desert; and as we were running short of food of every description ourselves, we thought it best ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... the cheek, and pulled out his enormous quid of tobacco. "There now, I'm ready, and don't be afraid of choking me." One of the attendants then thrust several pieces of gold into the sailor's mouth, who spitting them all out into his hat, jumped on his legs, made a jerk of his head with a kick of the leg behind to the pacha; and declaring that he was the funniest old beggar he had ever fallen in with, nodded to Mustapha, and hastened out ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... water rose over the topmost letter and a moist silence prevailed till a sudden jerk fished up the bag, and before the dolls could recover their wits they were spread out on the floor of a mail car to dry, while several busy men sorted and saved such papers and letters as ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... upon it was supported. There were lilies and roses in the clean bit of front yard, and on a box was a number of geraniums flourishing in tin cans. There were boxes of violets, and a thick honeysuckle was hugging a post and sending out sweet yellow sprays. Beck drew up before the house with a jerk that had determination in it. Bud jumped out with a boyish shout, but ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... had approached him again. He shoved her aside. With a jerk he got to his feet, struck an attitude, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... said Patsy, scratching his head thoughtfully. He stood up with a jerk. It had occurred to him suddenly that he was sitting while the gentlemen were standing. "I never could see inside a human. I don't know how it is at all that I can see the mind of ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... with a depth of comprehension that terrified me; and the motor pulled up with a jerk at a spot where hardly a post served to mark where the woods commenced and the wayside grass stopped. We took one of the dim paths which the rabbits had made and forced our way through the undergrowth into the ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... like that Maltese, are puzzled, and stand, as he did, for a moment indecisive; that would have been fatal to you. As, you see, I leap forward, changing my advanced foot as I do so, catch your wrist, and pull your arm with a sudden jerk towards me, and at the same moment strike you under the arm with my ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... so softly, the first thing they knew about it was the wheel of that side was down. T' other fellow's at work now, but he makes more noise about it. When the linchpin comes out on his side, there'll be a jerk, I tell you! Some think it will spoil the old cart, and they pretend to say that there are valuable things in it which may get hurt. Hope not,—hope not. But this is the great Macadamizing place,—always cracking ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... the deuce!' replied the latter, with an impatient jerk of the head. Hargrave withdrew with a look of cold disdain, saying,—'You know where to find me, should you feel disposed ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... you like—only get on now!" said Varillo, pulling his head in with a jerk. And sinking back in his seat again he wiped his hot face and cursed his miserable destiny. It would have been all right if he had only remembered that sheath! No one would have got on such a track of suspicion as that he, the lover and affianced husband of Angela, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... followed after him, so that immediately there were three runners, one after the other—namely, foremost the voluntary beggar, then Zarathustra, and thirdly, and hindmost, his shadow. But not long had they run thus when Zarathustra became conscious of his folly, and shook off with one jerk all his ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... down on the river bottom, and being mules, not only refused to get up, but insisted upon keeping their noses under the water. The wheelers broke through, too, but had the good sense to stand on their feet, but they gave the ambulance such a hard jerk that the front wheels broke off more ice and went down to the river bottom, also. By the time all this had occurred, I was the only one left inside, and found myself very busy trying to keep myself from slipping down under the front seat, where water had already come in. General Dickinson ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... those proud young gentlemen and young ladies, dressed in their silks, jewelry, and prunella, from top to toe, take the jerks, would often excite my risibilities. The first jerk or so you would see their fine bonnets, caps, and combs fly, and so sudden would be the jerking of the head that their long, loose hair would crack almost as loud ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... and walked back with the two boys. They found the sleds on the sidewalk, exactly where a sudden jerk of the sled she was on had made Ruth drop the ropes. Even Nelson could not scold his sister when the sleds were so easily found, and as they went back toward the hill he and Ruth and Sunny Boy ...
— Sunny Boy and His Playmates • Ramy Allison White
... through Hetty for she also felt she recognized that tattered figure. Then one of the horsemen seized the captive's bridle, and the man made a slight indignant gesture as the jerk flung off his hands. Flora Schuyler closed ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... the wires. This did not take long, after which all that remained was to pull out the staff and "beat it." Taking his pistol in his right hand, to be ready for emergencies, and reaching up with the left, he gave the pole a sharp jerk. Well, there must have been another wire, somewhere, connected up with two "fixed rifles," aimed directly at the stick for, when he pulled on it, two rifle reports rang out and two bullets hit the flagstaff, cutting it off just below his hand ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... note and despatched it to Sir Palmes Fairborne, the Lieutenant-Governor. Scrope took a turn or two across the room while the Major was writing the news which Knightley had brought. Then—"What game is this he's playing?" he said, with a jerk of his head to the door by which Knightley had gone out. "I have no mind to ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... fingers caught hold of a silver chain, and pulling it out with a jerk, he saw a silver key attached to it. "Oh, what is that?" he asked eagerly. "What does ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was not altered. The mystery of that great pageant, the mental life of William Dale, could not be permitted to unfold itself any further. It must cease with a snap and a jerk, much as when the electric current becomes too strong for a small incandescent lamp and the bulb bursts, the filaments fuse, and all that the lamp ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... sitting. Stop biting your nails, chewing your moustaches, rolling your tongue in your mouth or any other unnecessary movement such as may have become "second nature" with you while studying, reading or writing. Never twitch or jerk your body. Never wink your eyes or look blank. Train yourself to stand sudden and loud noises with equanimity and composure. Such things betray lack of control. Do not let anything outside (or even within you) disturb your composure. When ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... a horrified jerk, pitched the ledger right at the curtains, behind which the owner of the hand might be supposed to stand. The hand was instantaneously and smoothly snatched away, the curtains made a great wave, and Mr. Prosser got round the bed in time to see the closet-door, which was at the other side, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... finger went to work To move the stubborn lid, And presently a mighty jerk The mighty mischief did; For all at once, ah! woeful case, The snuff came ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... did not fancy having his collar seized by a stranger. He did not resent the act with snarls and a show of teeth, as in the case of the beach comber. But he stiffened to offended dignity, and, with a sudden jerk, freed himself ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... corner of the chamber I saw a frame of pulleys set in the ceiling. But it came not presently to my mind wherefore they were there. 'They set those short sticks under my arms,' the Queen said, speaking heavily as it were with sleep. 'Then they jerk up the pulleys, and I have to go up with them. It hurts very much. I think I scream sometimes, and then he beats me for disturbing people. They alway do it at night. They say I need it, and I am mad. I marvel if they cure mad people ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... entered the box, and chattered and feasted, but the cover did not fall, and the time the children were waiting in silence seemed very long. At length an old, strong bird caught up a grain attached to the string, and gave it a violent jerk. Out came the little prop, and down went the heavy cover, and a jolly old singer was entrapped. He screamed and fluttered, and his frightened companions flew ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... the night flat and stale in his mouth, Thornton turned his back upon the merriment in the little schoolhouse and strode away to his horse awaiting him under the oak. He tightened the cinch with a savage jerk, coiled his tie rope and flung himself into the saddle. Did he not already have enough on his hands without running after a girl with grey eyes and a blazing temper? Had he not already enough to think about, what with guarding his range interests from a ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... the middle of his operations, he stopped with a jerk and sat up motionless, save for a tremulous quiver of his muzzle. There was certainly something moving close at hand. Long before the faint vibration had reached his ears, his whiskers had caught it and flashed their danger-signal to ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... and shut. The cat looked serious, for a moment doubtful, and her ears flattened in nervous expectation. Presently she rose with a jerk of her tail and started on a noiseless tour of the studio. She sneezed at a pot of turpentine, hastily retreating to the table, which she presently mounted, and having satisfied her curiosity concerning a roll of red modelling wax, returned to the door and sat down with her eyes ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... deserve all praise. But, if accounts speak true, there are others who are more deserving the lash of correction than many whom they so brutally arrest. Need they be told that they have no right to kick, or jerk, or otherwise abuse an unresisting victim? Are they aware of the fact that the fallen are still human, and that, as guardians of the peace, they are bound to yet be merciful while discharging their duties? I have heard of more than one instance where men, and even women, were treated on and before ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... dreadful, and if a cry of agony, it was of agony that was soon over. Its fatal cause was soon exhibited, when Roland, awakened by the sound from the trance, which, during the brief moment of his passage through the abyss, had chained his faculties, turned, by a violent jerk, the head of his charger up the stream, in the instinctive effort to render assistance to his less fortunate followers. A fainter flash than before played upon the waters, and he beheld two or three ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... enough for all hands for half a day. Our gang laid out on the mizzen topsail yard, and after more than half an hour's hard work, furled the sail, though it bellied out over our heads, and again, by a slat of the wind, blew in under the yard with a fearful jerk, and almost threw us off from ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... about his mind, coloring the abiding sense of loneliness. His last triumph in the delicate art of his profession had given him no exhilarating sense of power. He saw the woman's face, miserable and submissive, and he wondered. But he brought himself up with a jerk: this was the danger of permitting any personal feeling or speculation to creep ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... know a good deal more about the tendencies of the modern drama than I do," said Katherine drily, "if you're in as deep as all that." She slid off the couch with a jerk. "Good-bye, Betty. Are you sure ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... shining. He sent his lean roan on the run down the crooked street among the crooked houses; he scattered a handful of dirty ducks flopping and scuttling out of his way; he drew after him a noisy barking of dogs, startled out of their sleep in the shade; he brought his horse up with a sharp jerk of the reins before the blue-and-white sign of the saloon; he was half out of the saddle when a glimpse of something down the street altered his intention in a flash; he wheeled his horse, and, with ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... great, massive head and the huge paws, recalling the while what he had seen since he had been in South Africa— a horse's back broken by one blow, the heads of oxen dragged down and the necks broken by another jerk; and he felt that he would be perfectly helpless when the brute made its ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... with not too many currents in it. Jenny's fluent fancy was inclined to dwell upon this notion. She a little lost sight of Alf's grievance in her pleasure at the figures she had drawn. Her mind was recalled with a jerk. Now: what was it? Alf had wanted to take her—Jenny. Right! He had taken Emmy. Because he had taken Emmy, he had a grievance. Right! But against whom? Against Emmy? Certainly not. Against himself? By no means. Against Jenny? ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... and passed over the shoulders under her chin. As I threw down the window and knelt on the cushioned seat, leaning far out to get a better view, a long whistle screamed through the station, followed by a quick series of dull, clanking sounds; then there was a slight jerk, and my train moved on. Luckily the window was narrow, being the one over the seat, beside the door, or I believe I would have jumped out of it then and there. In an instant the speed increased, and I was ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... Sarah Jane," protested the little boy, trying to jerk away from her, "I got to stay here and pertec' Billy and Miss Minerva's beau 'cause they's a robber might come back and tie 'em up and make 'em bleed if I ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... beginning. She had contracted the habit of wincing in response to them. Whenever Jimmy jerked his thumb over his shoulder you saw her blink; and whenever he cracked his knuckles she shrank back. The blink followed the jerk, and the shrinking followed the cracking as the flash follows the ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... drove into the yard, crushing the nettles with the wheels, and drew up at the steps. The white-headed man, who seemed very alert, was already standing on the bottom step, his legs bent and wide apart, he unfastened the apron of the carriage, holding back the strap with a jerk and aiding his master to alight; he kissed ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... Fitzpatrick. "Mishtress Timothy Fitzpatrick, Monaghan that was, the Monaghans o' Ballinghalereen, an owld family, poor as Job's turkey, but proud as the divil, an' wance the glory o' Mayo. An' this," she added, indicating her spouse with a jerk of her thumb, "is Timothy Fitzpatrick, me husband, a dacent man in his way. Timothy, where's yer manners? Shtand up an' do ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... certain rules to be observed in the interests not only of the horseman but of the animal which he bestrides. First, then, he should take the leading rein, which hangs from the chin-strap or nose-band, (2) conveniently in his left hand, held slack so as not to jerk the horse's mouth, whether he means to mount by hoisting himself up, catching hold of the mane behind the ears, or to vault on to horseback by help of his spear. With the right hand he should grip the reins along with a tuft of hair beside the shoulder-joint, (3) so ...
— On Horsemanship • Xenophon
... looked up, and saw the bucket hanging there, and with some difficulty he climbed into it. As he weighed at least four times as much as the fox the bucket went down with a jerk, and the other bucket, in which the fox was seated, came to ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... in the rich, gentle voice of the Altrurian. I lifted my head with a jerk from the pillow, and saw him standing against the closed door, with my shoes in his hand. "Oh, I am sorry I waked ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... resting in Phil's lap when she heard a peculiar buzzing in her ears, which she thought must come from weariness. She sat up with a jerk. ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... when I fall in love? But I am in love—Oh, there's Eldorada and Mr. Beck!" She broke off with a jerk, signalling with her field-glass to the pair who had just appeared at the farther end of the nave. "I told them that if they'd meet me here to-day I'd try to make them understand Tiepolo. Because, you see, at home we never ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... there, my nest," muttered Garron, with a jerk of his thumb indicating the direction in which his hut lay. Again he drew ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... at you," said Yates, strolling into the barn, taking a telescopic metal cup from his pocket, and clinking it into receptive shape by a jerk of the hand. He offered the now elongated cup to Hiram, who declined any ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... often his low voice warned me of suspicious actions and impending treachery. Sometimes it was the quick shot from his rifle, knocking a nigger over, that was the first warning I received. And in my rush to the boat his hand was always there to jerk me ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... the sides. When this is thrown in the wake of the ship, the bird settles on the water to feed. The upper part of its beak is hooked like that of a bird of prey, and as the albatross opens its beak and bites at the pork, you give a jerk, so that the triangle catches the upper part of the beak by two small notches, and the bird is left hanging. If the line should break, the whole thing simply falls off and the bird is unharmed. In hauling in, therefore, you have to be very careful to hold the line quite ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf, And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself; A wink of his eye and a twist of his head, Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread; He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk, And laying his finger aside of his nose, And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose; He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, And away they all flew like the down on a thistle. But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight, "Happy Christmas ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... strike her. No driver, ever if an angry one, would have done that. But I had the whip in my hand, around which the reins were knotted for the struggle, and when the horse broke into a gallop the jerk gave her a flick. I was not in the habit of whipping her. She felt herself insulted. It was now her turn to be angry; and an angry runaway means a bad business. Donna put down her head, struck out viciously from behind, and kicked the dasher flat. From ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... an angry cry, and thrust the table from him, sending the chess-men clattering into a corner. Instantly the little man leaned over and grasped the boy by the collar, and with a sudden jerk landed him across his own fat knees. Then, while the prisoner screamed and struggled, the man brought his hand down with a slap that echoed throughout the room, and continued the operation until Master Kenneth had received ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... in the streets of Florence, and see how, being essentially unable to talk, they try to make lips of their fingers! How they poke, wave, flourish, point, jerk, shake finger and fist at their antagonists—dumb essentially, all the while, if they knew it; unpersuasive and ineffectual, as the shaking of tree ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... the morning when he sobered, he had quite forgotten where the leg was, and how he broke it; he therefore got Kelson to splice the stump with the butt-end of a mop; but in the hurry it had been left three inches too long, so that he had to jerk himself up to the top of his peg at every step. The doctor, glad to breathe the fresh air after the horrible work he had gone through, was leaning over the side, speaking to Kelson. When I fell, he turned round and drew Cookee's fire on himself. "Doctor, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... shoulder to be sure that none overlooked them; then, with no more than a jerk of his hand beside his hip, threw the keen blade toward the wooden door of the bo'sun's locker. It traveled through the air swiftly and stuck, quivering on its thin point, in the stout teak. The Greek turned his smile ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... 'bout to die an' ain't nobody in the fiel' fer to pick the cotton an' he can't git no doctor an' he ain't got but jest that one pill; so he tie that pill to a string an' let the bigges' chile swaller it an' draw it back up an' let the nex' chile swaller it an' jerk it back up an' let the nex, Chile swaller it an' jerk it back up an' let the nex' Chile swaller it an' jerk it back up an' ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... the middle of the summer the lord of the turkey flock was feeding behind the barn when a loud gobble brought his head up with a jerk. ...
— The Tale of Turkey Proudfoot - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... a few steps while doing so. The bow of the sledge was almost at my feet, when—whizz! I was dropping down through space. The length of the hauling rope was twenty-four feet, and I was at the end of it. I cannot say that "my past life flashed before me." I just had time to think "Now for the jerk—will my harness hold?" when there was a wrench, and I was hanging breathless over the blue depth. Then the most anxious moment came—I continued to descend. A glance showed me that the crevasse was only ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... way, which sank into soothing darkness and the slowly lightened until a peep of gold came over the tree tops; and then, a red sun crept up having a big wonderful widespread wing on each side of it. Kate's head fell with a jerk which awakened her, so she arose, removed her dress, washed and brushed her hair, put on a fresh dress and taking a book, she crossed the street and sat on the bank of the stream again, which she watched instead of reading, as ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... told me all the scientific talk about time an' astronomy thet I've told you, an' then he tuck me into the thing. Fust thing I knew he give a yank to a lever in the machinery an' there was a big jerk thet near threw me on the back o' my head. I looked out, an' there we was a-flyin' over the country through the ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... putting in a power plant for his nibs"—he indicated the retreating Gordon with a disrespectful jerk of ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... much as put down his head to browse. There he stood, poor rogue, part puzzled, part angry, part, I believe, amused. He had not given up hope, and dully revolved the problem in his head, giving ever and again another jerk at the few inches of free rope that still remained unwound. A humorous sort of sympathy for the creature took hold upon me. I went up, and, not without some trouble on my part, and much distrust and resistance on the part of Neddy, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ur'nal knurl can'ker up braid' hi ber'nal shirk flux'ion ur bane' at tor'ney jerk suc'tion or dain' de ter'gent pith hos'pice a dieu' con ta'gion myth au'spice im brue' her ba'ceous growth bot'tom pre cede' frol'ic some loath au'tumn pro ceed' frol'ick ing loathe trunn'ion re deem' de pres'sion clothe bun'ion ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... and muttered brokenly. Thirlwell, however, could not hear what he said, and getting drowsy with the dry warmth of the stove, struggled to keep awake. He was not sure that he altogether succeeded, for now and then his head fell forward and he roused himself with a jerk, but did not think he really went to sleep. For all that, some hours had passed when he moved his chair and looked at his watch. It was quieter outside and the roar of the river had got distinct. Then Thirlwell heard a blanket thrown back ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... round me, with the horror that the place inspires, when Goblin clutches me by the wrist, and lays, not her skinny finger, but the handle of a key, upon her lip. She invites me, with a jerk, to follow her. I do so. She leads me out into a room adjoining—a rugged room, with a funnel-shaped, contracting roof, open at the top, to the bright day. I ask her what it is. She folds her arms, leers hideously, and stares. I ask ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... imaginable; elbowing along, zig-zag; one corner retreating as the other advances; making a thousand difficulties and objections at every move; until the old gentleman, out of all patience, gives a sudden jerk, and brings drawer and contents into the middle of the floor. His hostility to this unlucky piece of furniture increases every day, as if incensed that it does not grow better. He is like the fretful invalid who cursed his bed, that the longer he lay the harder it grew. The only benefit he ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... hung about his mind, coloring the abiding sense of loneliness. His last triumph in the delicate art of his profession had given him no exhilarating sense of power. He saw the woman's face, miserable and submissive, and he wondered. But he brought himself up with a jerk: this was the danger of permitting any personal feeling or speculation to ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... line of buoys, a stone-cast from our bows—lengthened itself along the line to thrice its former extent—paused as if for a moment—and then three of the buoys, after erecting themselves on their narrower base, with a sudden jerk slowly sank. 'One—two—three buoys!' exclaimed one of the fishermen, reckoning them as they disappeared;—'there are ten barrels for us secure.' A few moments were suffered to elapse: and then, unfixing the haulser from the stem, and bringing it aft to the stern, we commenced ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... Cristoforo, raising his long forefinger, and emphasising every fresh point with a convincing jerk, "because you have come to San Stefano. You would never have come here unless you wanted to find out the truth. Because you have changed your name. You would have had no reason to abandon the name of Luttrell unless you were not sure of your right to bear it. Because you spoke of Vincenza ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... shooting, on account of the savage propensities of the animal; but I have found that, with very rare exceptions, the Anatolian wild boar always runs. It is true that they (she or he, the females are the most savage) have a nasty knack of giving a sort of jerk with their heads, when fighting or even passing an enemy, and that jerk means to a man the ripping up of his leg from his heel to his thigh, to a dog the ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... said her aunt, leaning down to catch the child's hand and pull her to her feet. "She's coming to stay with you," she added, as Leonie stood quite still with that piteous jerk of the chin which comes from suppressed and overwhelming grief, as she watched the puppy play a one-sided game of bumblefoot ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... out now," he said, at last. "I've got other things to tend to. Can't stay here no longer, nohow." He unlocked the door and threw it open with a jerk. "Time's up!" he shouted, and Dorothy came out directly, almost as if she were running away. Alvin Mead clapped to the door with a great jar and locked it. Madelon, had she tried, could not have got a glimpse of Burr; but she did not try. She sprang at Dorothy Fair, ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... graciously. 'You have our ear. You would seem to have something on your chest in addition to that Neapolitan ice garment which, I regret to see, you still flaunt. If it is one tithe as painful as that, you have my sympathy. Jerk it out, Comrade Bristow.' ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... care. After he had pulled the barge about two hundred yards he stopped; the rope slackened and then the current pulled against us. The rope became taut again and the men shrieked from the barge. When you tug a boat, you must not jerk at the rope but pull it gently, so I urged Kari to pull it smoothly. In the course of an hour, he had actually drawn the boat in, and at the end of our journey he ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... comes in man's own good time. It comes in the crack of a rifle, and the moose jolts round with a spasmodic jerk. In a moment a movement amongst the surrounding tree-trunks captures its gaze. There is a pause, breathless, silent. Savage wrath leaps anew, and down sweeps the great head till the spread of antlers is couched like a forest of lance points. The huge body ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... the great pawl clanked once, twice, thrice; then a long pause and another clank, then a further pause. But my foot was still on the hawser, and I felt that it was steadily, although very slowly, yielding, and there was a moment when I could almost have sworn that I felt the ship jerk ever so slightly sternward. So I ventured to stimulate the men ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... its substance, hitherto unattempted on account of the great length of time required for the experiment, and the disproportionate strength of the line to the enormous weight employed, should any sudden jerk ensue from the heave of the sea. Captain Stanley had at length succeeded in contriving a very ingenious apparatus by which, upon striking soundings, the eight 32 pounds shot employed would be immediately detached, leaving no greater weight to be hauled up than the iron framework ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... stepped out of the elevator, I behind the others, Kite caught my attention with a low whistle, and in response to a furtive, beckoning, backward jerk of his head, I moved over to the desk. The reading gentlemen in the easy chairs, most consciously unconscious of us, sent blue smoke circles above their papers. Kite leaned far over to get his mustache ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... meek stranger with a jerk of his thumb. "And his wife and darter in the coach. They're all right and tight, ez if they was in the Fifth Avenue Hotel. But I reckon he allows to fetch 'em up yer," added Bill, as if he strongly doubted the wisdom of ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... his hand—with the olive around his brow. He has applied arithmetic to war, and finds it expensive. He would therefore induce France to disarm, that by reductions at home he may not be compelled to risk what would certainly jerk him out of the premiership—the imposition of new taxes. He may then keep his Corn Laws—he may then securely enjoy his sliding scale. Such are the hopes that dictate the intimation to disarm. It is sweet to prevent war; and, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 12, 1841 • Various
... young man who is here on leave, and she is the wife of a general who is at the front and can't look after his own honour. Gossip says, too, that the captain has been concerned in something else that will bring him up with a jerk if the Government hears of it. It's all written out here. Oh, it ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... had fat Major Stover by the neck. For all his weight, and in spite of his bulk, The Kid handled him as if he had been a child. An upward jerk dragged him from his chair. The Texan held him ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... Occasionally, she would forget and think he was out in the field or down in the mine; more rarely still, she would slip even further backward and wonder what he was about in his play. During these moments she would feel normal, but some object catching her eye would jerk her back to the present and the cruel truth. She and Martin had less than ever to say to each other, though in his own grim way he was more thoughtful, giving her to understand that there were no longer any restrictions laid upon her purchasing, and even suggesting that ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... to talk, Dick, but you know you wouldn't miss that manatee hunt for a farm. We will have to put it off a day or two, though, until we kill a deer and jerk the venison. We've just eaten the last scrap of meat in camp. There's a trail running back into the bushes that must lead to a meadow where we can walk ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... for a few minutes, past the end of Red Lane, though Stephen cast a wistful glance up it, and gave an impatient jerk to the load upon his shoulders. Tim had been walking beside him in silent reflection; but at last he came to ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... eyes on him. "A bully as well as a slacker. Never mind. She won't have to put up with him long. If I have any influence in this community that youth will be drafted and sent to a mud hole in France. Mark my words," she went on, settling her hat with a jerk, "that boy will be registered as a single man before this day's over. Go and start the engine, Lizzie. I daresay ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... down below, more than you'm tawld," said the old man with a significant wink and a jerk of his head, "but Jerrem he let me into it this ebenin' when he rinned up to see me for a bit. Seems one o' they sodger-chaps is carr'in' on with Eve, and Jerrem's settin' her on to rig un up so that her'll get un not to see what 'tain't maned ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... front with a sudden jerk that could mean but one thing. Marjorie cast a fleeting glance at Miss Merton. The teacher was frowning angrily, as though about to deliver a rebuke. Luckily for the two girls, the first recitation bell rang and they stood not upon the order of their going, but went with alacrity. ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... fingers were busy preparing the rawhide lariat that depended from the side of the saddle. On the very bank she brought up with a jerk that dragged her mount together, and at the same ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... narrative with many a jerk and start, Major Anthony was judge and jury, Mr. Lambert was a quiet spectator, but his wonderful eyes kept the witness on the right track, until he had almost completed his story and attempted to evade part of the conversation. ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... last, met her eyes fixed full upon him with that in their expression which no man could ignore. She had not expected him to turn. The movement disconcerted her. With a sharp jerk She averted her face, seeking to cover that momentary slip, to persuade him even then, if it were possible, into the belief that he had not ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... pleasure; and, dwelling also with pleasure upon her grievances against her mother, would gradually arrive at a state of dull-glowing resentment. She could, if she chose, easily free her brain from the obsession either by reading or by a sharp jerk of volition; but often she preferred not to do so, saying to herself voluptuously: "No, I will nurse my grievance; I'll nurse it and nurse it and nurse it! It is mine, and it is just, and anybody with any sense at all would admit instantly that I am absolutely right." Thus it ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... not the jerk of the starting train that half awoke me, but the consciousness that some one had flung himself into the compartment when the train was already in motion. I saw a small man putting something in the rack—a ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... a word in her ear; she glanced at him, nodded, and drew up her rein; but at that moment his horse gave a short upward jerk, and then fell grovelling on his knees, an arrow sticking in his side, close to Sir Hugh's knee. He flung his foot clear, and leapt to the Lady's side; and then in a moment he saw that the battle was gone against ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the driver's seat, and seeing neither his friend nor his enemy, saw the light with the bicycle behind it go over with a crash. That was when Varney's hands let go of the handle-bars. The next instant they fell upon Hammerton's withdrawing figure and brought it up with a sharp jerk. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... I'm a living man," answered Mike, halting so suddenly as to jerk the lady backwards and mash the crown ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... wave, thus giving the advantage to the shark. The fin disappeared. The belly flashed white in swift upward rush. Almost equally swift, but not quite, was Wolf Larsen. He threw his strength into one tremendous jerk. The Cockney's body left the water; so did part of the shark's. He drew up his legs, and the man-eater seemed no more than barely to touch one foot, sinking back into the water with a splash. But at the moment of contact Thomas Mugridge cried out. Then ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... 'Wusshup' must contrive to postpone till he has caught me," answered Freddy, as with a sudden jerk he succeeded in freeing himself from his captor's grasp, while, almost at the same moment, he dealt him a cuff on the side of the head which sent him reeling back to the door of the bell-tower, where encountering the mayor, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... which approximate to one another, as the fingers, toes, and armpits. The powder is very inflammable, and when propelled in a hollow cone against lighted spirit of wine on tow at the other end by a sudden jerk, its flash serves to imitate lightning for stage purposes. It was formerly used as tinder for lighting fires with the ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... of their colonel? But look! look!" cried the king, drawing up his horse with a sudden jerk, which threw it on its haunches, and seizing ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... I going?' I repeated. 'Thunder and lightning! I am riding down to the horse-pond. Do you think that I—?'—'To the horse-pond!' cried the castellan. 'I'll teach you, you swindler, to swim along the highroad back to Kohlhaasenbrueck!' And with a spiteful, vicious jerk he and the steward, who had caught me by the leg, hurled me down from the horse so that I measured my full length in the mud. 'Murder! Help!' I cried; 'breast straps and blankets and a bundle of linen ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... head with a jerk, peering into her face, slow to realize the incredible mistake he had made. He was still under the spell of the riotous passion that her lustful response had aroused. It had rushed over him like a great, resistless wave,—hot, delicious, tingling. He had been amazed, bewildered ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... still night and everything looked unreal and magical. Now and then the grass would bow down with a sudden jerk, as people do in their sleep, if they dream that they are falling, and then for a moment the lawyer would feel a warm breath, which vanished as suddenly as it came. A confused mass of gray and black clouds swept rapidly across the sky and at ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... currents of air [page 243] excluded. The apex sometimes crossed one or two divisions of the micrometer at an imperceptibly slow rate, but generally it moved onwards by rapid starts or jerks of 2/1000 or 3/1000, and in one instance of 4/1000 of an inch. After each jerk forwards, the apex drew itself backwards with comparative slowness for part of the distance which had just been gained; and then after a very short time made another jerk forwards. Four conspicuous ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... in spite of myself. A wink of his eye and a twist of his head Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread. He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk, And, laying his finger aside of his nose, And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose. He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, And away they all flew like the down of a thistle; But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight, "Merry ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... the silk any jerk as the balloon is released two pieces of string united with a slow match carry the strain between the instrument and the balloon until the ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... and had time to note the box of studs, German shaving tackle and rolls of twist which lay untidily in the window ere Smith kicked the door open, clattered down three wooden steps, and pulled himself up with a jerk, seizing my arm ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... one continuous all-including Case, the farewell service of his awl! Stitch away, thou noble Fox: every prick of that little instrument is pricking into the heart of Slavery, and World-worship, and the Mammon-god. Thy elbows jerk, as in strong swimmer-strokes, and every stroke is bearing thee across the Prison-ditch, within which Vanity holds her Workhouse and Ragfair, into lands of true Liberty; were the work done, there is in broad Europe one Free Man, and thou ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... like a naughty child, let her kick and scream and cry. Pick her up, Morena, and carry her off. Do you hear? Don't let her make you change your plans." The doctor had seen his patient's convulsive jerk. "Pack her up. Make your reservations and go straight to 'Buck' Yarnall's ranch, Lazy-Y,—that's his brand, I believe,—Middle Fork, Wyoming. I'll send him a wire. He knows me. She needs all outdoors to run about in. She needs joggin' around all day through the sagebrush on a cow-pony in ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... the room, and the 'flick' of the punkah-towel and the soft whine of the rope through the wall-hole followed it. Then the punkah flagged, almost ceased. The sweat poured from Spurstow's brow. Should he go out and harangue the coolie? It started forward again with a savage jerk, and a pin came out of the towels. When this was replaced, a tomtom in the coolie-lines began to beat with the steady throb of a swollen artery inside some brain-fevered skull. Spurstow turned on his side and swore gently. There was no movement on Hummil's part. The man had ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... line which had a bullet flattened around it for a sinker, when he felt it jerk to one side, and almost immediately ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... unimaginative man of business; he hadn't even believed in fairies when he was a boy. This was child-talk; he permitted himself to express his opinion by a jerk of his head, and was silent. Diamonds like those ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... 'Unnecessary Disclaimer,' for which we are indebted to a metropolitan friend: 'A few evenings since, as a gentleman was walking up Broadway, and just as he was crossing the side-walk at the junction of White-street, his feet suddenly slipped from under him, his hat flew forward with the involuntary jerk, and he measured his length on the side-walk, striking his bare head on the hard ice, till all rang again. At the instant it chanced that a lady and gentleman were just emerging from White-street into Broadway, and the prostrate sufferer, lying directly across their path, interrupted ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... got a lump in my throat, 'n' I think it's a bunch of bright conversation stuck there. But just then a chunk of water rolls out of my eye, 'n' hits my hat—pow! It looks bigger'n Lake Erie, 'n' 'fore I kin jerk the hat away—pow!—comes another one. I knows the colonel sees 'em, 'n' ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... his hands tied behind his back, by the wrists to one end of a rope passed round a pulley bolted into the vaulted ceiling, the other end being attached to a windlass, by turning which he could be hoisted, into the air, and dropped again, either slowly or with a jerk, as ordered by the judge. The suspension generally lasted during the recital of a Pater Noster, an Ave Maria, or a Miserere; if the accused persisted in his denial, it was doubled. This second degree, the last of the ordinary torture, was put in practice when the crime ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... face and said, "Licke-e-dar, a dollar! All mine—he done gin it to me, an' I'se gwine to buy a gown, an' a han'kercher, an' some shoes, an' some candy, an' some—" the rest of her intended purchases were cut short by a jerk of the plank, which sent her sprawling on her hands and knees, with a jeer from Ted sounding in her ears. The "Hatty" was off, and with a feeling of relief the stranger kept his seat on the rear deck, or staid in his stateroom until Palatka was reached, where ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... This was another precaution against sharks, as it is well known that their malevolent impulses are more likely to be excited and their attacks directed against white objects than any other. His idea was that a shark attacking the white handkerchief would jerk the cord and thus give warning of its presence in the rear, in time for him to be ready with ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... Painter. A droll fellow gets a lump of soot or lamp black, and after fixing a ring of the boys and girls about him, he lays his two fore-fingers on his knees, and says. 'Horns, horns, cow horns!' and then raises his finders by a jerk up above his head; the boys and girls in the ring then do the same thing, for the meaning of the play is this:—the man with the black'ning always raises his fingers every time he names an animal; but if he names any that has no horns, and that the others jerk up their fingers, then they ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... she gin her cheer a jerk Ez though she wished him furder, An' on her apples kep' to work, Parin' ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... on the same course until abreast of the perch, which was only a forked stick. The men came aft and hauled in the mizzen sheer. Chambers put up the helm. The mizzen came across with a jerk, and the sheet was again allowed to run out. The jib came over with a report like the shot of a cannon, and at the same moment ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... sufficient to support a man. Consequently, at each step we went in over our knees in the soft wet snow. Sometimes a man would step into a hole in the ice which was hidden by the covering of snow, and be pulled up with a jerk by his harness. The sun was very hot and many ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... leaping, barking, laughing, and scolding on the part of the dog and his admirers, that the room was in an uproar. He jumped over a stick; he got into a chair, and sat up on two legs; he kissed the ladies' hands; he suffered an apple-paring to be laid across his nose, then threw it up with a jerk and caught it in his mouth. Nothing very remarkable, certainly, but, as Miss Fortune observed to somebody, "if he had been the learned pig, there couldn't ha' been more fuss ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... I always knew what I wanted to be. I told him," with a backward jerk of his head ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... up for "physical jerks," by which is meant calisthenics, or setting-up exercises. We now realized the appropriateness of the nickname, for the first stretching would cause a number to rush to the side, where they would attempt to jerk their hearts out, and also, standing on tiptoe on a rolling ship, one can only bend in jerks. To our joy these parades were short affairs, for there was only the limited space of the boat and saloon decks and each platoon had to take its turn ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... I gave an involuntary exclamation. Beside the road, almost on it, lay the figure of a man. Our driver pulled up with a jerk and I was out of the car in ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... such deliberation that scarcely any motion was perceptible. The Earth spun its diurnal round, the Moon went forward in her monthly orbit. The lighted ground-glass globe which did duty for the sun showed night and day and the seasons. Miriam was transported, when suddenly there was a jerk and a stop. Something was wrong, and Farrow, who was fortunately turning with great caution, gave a cry such as a man might utter who was suddenly struck a heavy blow. He recovered himself instantly, and luckily at the very first glance saw what was the matter. The nicety of his own handicraft ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... accounts," said Warrington, speaking to Craig. "If you hear of me in America, in Europe, anywhere, keep away from the places I'm likely to go. Tell him," with an indifferent jerk of his head toward the insensible Mallow, "tell him that I give him that fifty pounds with the greatest good pleasure. ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... what is the effect of a sudden blast.' In short, he interpreted the expression as referring to condition, not to position. The common notion, therefore, seems to be erroneous; and Shenstone's witty remark on Divines trying to give the tree a jerk upon a death-bed, to make it lie favourably, is ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... was quiet and sober; and when Tip raised his arm with such a sudden jerk that he knocked his arithmetic to the floor, Bob leaned over and quietly picked it up and laid it back in its place; which was a wonderful thing for ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... known for years his mastery over the inanimate things of the world. He knew how easy it was to tear a tree from its roots, to jerk a great tree-limb from its socket. He knew that under most conditions he had nothing to fear from the great tigers, although a fight with a tiger is a painful thing and well to avoid. But he did not ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... slacking the painter. As this was a favorable moment for Mr. Parasyte, who was determined to "board" us, he was on the point of stepping forward. As soon as the sails of our craft caught the breeze, she darted off again, straightening the painter, and giving the principal's boat such a fierce jerk, that it not only upset Mr. Parasyte, but heeled his boat over so that she half filled ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... said, with a backward jerk of his head, "but they are. I'm told it's a delicious kind of madness worth all your sanity. Do not let us disturb them. Come and sit down beside me until the time is up," he glanced at his watch; "they ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... for her part was deaf to the sound of coming sleighbells. Emmet had been driving slowly to give his mare a breathing-space. Now, as she veered suddenly of her own accord, he drew in the reins with a jerk, and brought the sleigh to a standstill so near to Lena Harpster that he could have touched ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... boy managed to get him to the room and was just about to drop him in the tub from the apron when he discovered that the apron was sticking to the candy. One of the boys gave it a jerk to loosen it, but sad to relate, he gave too vigorous a pull and Zip dropped from the boy's arms, not into the tub, but at one side and by a mighty effort he gave himself two rolls which brought him to the head of the stairs. Another roll sent him tumbling bumpety-bump down the ...
— Zip, the Adventures of a Frisky Fox Terrier • Frances Trego Montgomery
... mixture of pliability and perseverance in his nature; he was in form and spirit like a supple jack—yielding, but although; though he bent, he never broke and though he bowed beneath the slightest pressure, yet the moment it was away, jerk! he was as erect and carried his ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... swell is a most difficult and dangerous undertaking; and when the swell is at all considerable, it is commonly impracticable. No ropes or blocks are capable of bearing the jerk of the sea. The harpooners are annoyed by the surge, and repeatedly drenched in water; and are likewise subject to be wounded by the breaking of ropes or hooks of tackles, and even by strokes from each other's knives. Hence accidents in this kind of flensing are not uncommon. The ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... his unsteadiness helped not at all by the fact that the train chose that moment to start with a jerk. He grabbed at the wall as a meteor flashed through the dark of the Kansas night ...
— Reel Life Films • Samuel Kimball Merwin
... of the larger suitcase with a jerk. A pause. They look, almost afraid. DORA moves to the ...
— Night Must Fall • Williams, Emlyn
... there is some sort of hazy notion hovering around in my brain, that I ought to learn more about him," the other smiled back. "This thing of being made a target by any fool who happens to own a rifle is something that ought to be stopped with a jerk. Yes, I do expect to ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... wave raised in the shallow directly, and in less time than before, and ere the bait could have reached the bottom, it was seized and the line ran out, to give Carey's arm a heavy jerk and elicit a cry ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... from the incessant matrix of Modern Time, so motherly of monstrous litters of "Gorgon and Hydra and Chimaeras dire"; you will understand what I mean when you consider the quite recent date of, say, the introduction of anaesthetics or antiseptics, the discovery of the knee-jerk, bacteriology, or even of such a doctrine as the circulation of the blood. We are at this very time, if I mistake not, on the verge of new insights which will enable man to laugh at disease—laugh at it in the sense of over-ruling its natural tendency to produce death, not by any means ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... to draw the animal from its tube. It is a sudden rush, a surprise attack, too quick to permit the Spider to parry it. Fortunately, the latter's two hind-legs are firmly hooked to the dwelling; and the Segestria escapes with a jerk, for the other, having delivered her shock attack, hastens to release her hold; if she persisted, the affair might end badly for her. Having failed in this assault, the Wasp repeats the procedure at other funnels; she will even return to ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... much, bless it.' Wi' that he looked at her; such a scowling look! She knew what he meant, and stepped softly across the floor to him, and put her hand on his arm. He seem'd as though he'd shake it off by a jerk on his elbow, but she said quite low, 'For poor little Johnnie's sake, Richard.' He did not move or speak again, and after looking in his face for a minute, she turned away, swallowing deep in her throat. She kissed th' sleeping babby as she passed, when I paid her. To quieten th' gruff ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... photographs) it is hardly necessary to say much. He was about six feet in height, but scarcely looked so tall, as he stooped a good deal; in later days he yielded to the stoop; but I can remember seeing him long ago swinging his arms back to open out his chest, and holding himself upright with a jerk. He gave one the idea that he had been active rather than strong; his shoulders were not broad for his height, though certainly not narrow. As a young man he must have had much endurance, for on one of the shore excursions from the ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... of a sudden—there was a fearful jerk on Monnie's line! It took her by surprise. The little rod flew right out of her hands! Monnie flung herself on her stomach on the ice and caught the rod just as it was going down the hole! She held on hard and pulled ...
— The Eskimo Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... the ridge, and dropped clean on to something soft and yielding below. Red specks dotted the blackness before my eyes for a few moments as I bounced on the hard stones. I jumped up with a jerk and spun round to find, blocking my path, a menacing figure regarding me over the barrel of a Browning pistol. In the other hand ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... never yet received from mortal man. For a moment it took away his senses. His sight failed; his ears tinkled; his frightened horse turned about to fly; and he was falling from the saddle, when the very action of falling jerked his head upwards, and with the jerk he ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... have left thy money with the pick-purses than help to fill the skin of this lazy rogue; 'tis not the first time we have met. See here," and with a dexterous jerk he caught ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... swallow the poor boy had in his tender infancy, and how hard it was crammed with legends, hymns, and allegories, with so many scruples bound down on his poor little conscience, that no wonder, when the time of expansion came, the whole concern should give way with a jerk.' ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... struck a match to take another look at the glass, when suddenly the boat began to tremble violently, and then gave such a sudden jerk at her cable that I fell forward on ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... jovially. "In a day or two I'll throw the hook in, and you'll see what I land. He's as good as caught right now, but we'll let him nibble a while before we jerk. And say, he's a corker, Lou. Finest young fellow I've seen in many a ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Eustace felt so queer he swayed to try and keep his balance. He was so giddy he must have fallen had the vision not swept forward and caught him. The feeling of those strong arms about him, the warm touch of Aunt Dorothy's face bent down to his, brought him with a jerk to himself again, and he did not faint. But even then he could not ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... "I'm engaged myself, or I'd be only too pleased, but you just speak to that other gentleman there,"—with an encouraging jerk of his sleek head towards the next vehicle. "He'll take you anywhere ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... Finnish as so in German, helped by a good deal of polite smiling, when a door opened and mamma returned, followed by a boy of seventeen, who was introduced as "our son." We got up and shook hands. He seized our finger, and bowed his head with a little jerk over it—that was not all, however, for, as if desirous of dislocating his neck, he repeated the performance with a second handshake. This was extra politeness on his part—two handshakes, two jerky bows; all so ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... nothing to confess—I will not renounce the creed of my forefathers!" answered Isaachar in a tone of bitter agony, as he writhed upon the rack, while every fresh shock and jerk of the infernal engine seemed as if it would tear the very life out of him. But the old man remained firm in the declaration of his innocence of the dreadful crime imputed to him: stanch also to his creed did he remain; and ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... gave a whistle, and I put my head out of the window to see Mrs. Carter industriously applying white cambric to her face, which occupation she relinquished to call out last good-byes; another whistle and a jerk, and we were off, leaving her and Mrs. Worley, surrounded by children and servants, using their handkerchiefs to wipe tears and wave farewell, while the General waved his hat for good-bye. Then green hedges rapidly changing took their place, ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... to enter Dutch House, shadows appeared on the ground glass of the side door; and opening with a jerk, it let out a gush of fetid air together with Respectability on the prowl—Respectability incognito, sly, furtive of ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... something of terror too leap to the countenance of the high priest and then she saw him spring forward and jerk upon a leather thong that depended from the ceiling of the apartment. Instantly there dropped from above a cunningly contrived partition that fell between them and the intruder, effectively barring him from them and at the same time leaving ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... narrative Dick furrowed his brows in perplexity. When, however, John came to tell of his second year's sojourn with the Ojibways, he sat up with a jerk and stared at his ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... He heard the woman's last cry, and came threshing through the bushes on foot. He saw Sylvestre, unconscious of any approach, spring forward, jerk away the hands that had drawn the thong over the branch, let the strangling woman down and loosen the noose. Her eyes, starting out with horror, turned to him; she fell on her knees and clasped her hands. The tears were ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... was flung open with a violent jerk, and the prisoner entered, or rather precipitated himself into the room. Goguet turned pale behind his table, and Lecoq advanced a step forward, ready to spring upon the prisoner and pinion him should it be requisite. But when the latter reached the centre of the room, he paused and looked ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... perfectly controlled body might have withheld even a quiver of the flesh, but I am no Spartan. At my convulsive shudder each horrid claw gripped a death-hold. In one swift motion I seized a corkscrew that lay nearby, pried loose with a quick jerk every single pede and threw the odious thing a dozen yards. A trail of red, inflamed spots rose where it had stood and remained painful ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... hill, before Caney, a man with a lanyard gave a quick jerk. There was a cap explosion at the butt of the gun and a bulging white cloud from the muzzle; the trail bounced from its shallow trench, the wheels whirled back twice on the rebound, and the shell was hissing through the air as iron hisses when a blacksmith thrusts it red-hot into cold water. Basil ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... involuntary jerk at the reins I brought my team to its haunches and reached for my revolver. Quite needless: with the quickest movement that I had ever seen in anything but a cat—almost before the words were out of the horseman's mouth—May ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... flat and apparently dying a la Forrest: a gasp—a squirm—a flop, and so on, till the street was well blocked up, the drivers all swearing like demons in bad hats, and the chief actor's circulation decidedly quickened by every variety of kick, cuff jerk, and haul. When the last breath seemed to have left his body, and "Doctors were in vain," a sudden resurrection took place; and if ever a mule laughed with scornful triumph, that was the beast, as he leisurely rose, gave a comfortable shake, and calmly regarding the excited crowd ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... on his knees, That confounded De Guise Came behind with the 'fogle' that caused all this breeze, Whipp'd it tight round his neck, and, when backward he'd jerk'd him, The rest of the rascals jump'd on him ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... impossible; and their comrades' lives, and those of all, depended on their standing by the vessel. Though the gallant coxswain did all that man could do to combat this new danger, still with a terrific jerk the steel hawser got right under the lifeboat, hoisting her, in spite of her great weight, ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... though it is no small thing to inoculate seventy millions of people with new standards, yet, if there is to be any relief, that will have to be done. We must change ourselves from a race that admires jerk and snap for their own sakes, and looks down upon low voices and quiet ways as dull, to one that, on the contrary, has calm for its ideal, and for their own sakes loves ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... endeavors to grasp the unsteady support which contributed so materially to his escape. It still hung by a shred and hindered the free use of his hand. Without any hesitation he seized the offending nail in his teeth and completed the surgical operation by a rapid jerk. ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... closing the subject, and this time his wife had no more to say. She gave his threadbare, scrupulously pressed coat a final pat and jerk of adjustment, and stood off ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... to the circle of metal on the floor and the machines around the room. 'Those are what we used to jerk you from your own time to this ...
— The Man Who Saw the Future • Edmond Hamilton
... with the most disastrous effects. Half the cavalrymen tumbled off their saddles at the unexpected bucking of their frightened ponies, and the whole band of horsemen was soon scattered in every direction, while the men who were carrying the hearse, following the example of the ponies, gave such a jerk at the sudden explosion, as to nearly drop their burden on the ground. By-and-by, the commotion subsided; the procession got into marching order, and all went well until the seaport was reached. The better class Japanese, ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... situated, will coil himself up, and instantaneously darting forward his head, strike and bite whatever comes in his way. I then presented my hat, which the animal violently seized with his fangs; when, instantly snatching it away, I seldom failed to extract them by the sudden jerk; for, being curved, they cannot be readily withdrawn, and sitting but loosely in the gums, are easily disengaged. Being thus rendered in a great degree harmless, I pinned their heads down, and tied them up. Great care, however, ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... wonder was it to behold these waters so smooth and placid while the surf foamed and thundered beyond the reef. I now baited my hooks with fat of the goat and betook me to my angling; nor had I long to wait ere I felt a jerk on my line, and tingling with the joy of it I whipped my rod so furiously that my fish whirled glittering through the air, and flying from my barbless hook lay floundering on the sands behind me; and though of no great size yet a very good fish I thought him. And indeed I found ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... contrary, he was as red in the face as a crawfish, and resisting struck me. I held his arms fast, but he disengaged himself with so violent a jerk that the yellow facings of his right sleeve ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... throwing himself half way round on his chair with a jerk — "you may go on, and I'll read ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... more, this time repeating a number, "twenty-two-naught-five," or something like that, just as she splashed down into the two-inch lake that covered the hollow in the pavement. The bell rang twice, the car started with a jerk, there was another splash, and a big gray-clad figure alighted in ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... he advanced toward him until he came near enough to seize hold of the gun and turn it aside. The man made a violent jerk to wrest the weapon from him, and still clinging fast hold of it he was pulled on board. In the scuffle to regain possession of his gun, the man trod upon a roller on the deck, lost his balance, and fell sprawling on his back. Friend Hopper seized that opportunity to throw the gun overboard. ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... are so many, many things I can't do." Emil echoed her tone sarcastically. "Sometimes I don't want to do anything at all, and sometimes I want to pull the four corners of the Divide together,"—he threw out his arm and brought it back with a jerk,—"so, like a table-cloth. I get tired of seeing men and horses going up ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... to the rescue with the simple but energetic compendium of boating instruction, "Put your oar in deep, and bring it out with a jerk!" ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... before the creatures were astir, and your tracks completely covered and you actually had birds of your own, trained to serve you and decoy their kith and kin, while you yourself lay in some hiding-place, seeing yet unseen, and you had learnt by long practice to jerk in the net before the birds could fly away. [40] Or you might be out after hares, and for a hare you had two breeds of dogs, one to track her out by scent, because she feeds in the dusk and takes to her form by day, ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... stranger hath been bred at the French court, and hath there learned politeness and grace of manner, which none understand so well as the nobility of France. That gait, now! A vulgar spectator might deem it stiff—he might call it a hitch and jerk—but, to my eye, it hath an unspeakable majesty, and must have been acquired by constant observation of the department of the Grand Monarque. The stranger's character and office are evident enough. He is a French Ambassador, come to treat with ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... coloring the abiding sense of loneliness. His last triumph in the delicate art of his profession had given him no exhilarating sense of power. He saw the woman's face, miserable and submissive, and he wondered. But he brought himself up with a jerk: this was the danger of permitting any personal feeling or speculation to creep into ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... this thought came to her, and brought terror with it. She could delay no longer. Down the narrow stairway she hurried through the darkness, and reached the door. In her panic she forgot her usual caution. With a jerk she drew the bolt back, and a harsh grating sound arose. She flung open the door, which also creaked on its unused hinges. Then leaping out, she hastily banged the door after her, ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... illusion?" rejoins the critic, with a contemptuous snort. "On the word of a gentleman, I see nothing illusive in the wretchedly bedaubed sheet of canvas that forms your background, or in these pasteboard slips that hitch and jerk along the front. The only illusion, permit me to say, is in the puppet-showman's tongue,—and that but a wretched one, into ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... shot through the air; and the loop glided swiftly over the great head and tightened suddenly around the hairy neck, just at the moment the bear came to the decision to charge Thure and sprang toward him, with the result that the sudden unexpectedness of the jerk of Bud's rope yanked him off his feet and hurled ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... the watcher felt a tremor for the rash climber. Wayland's head was on a level with the crest of another ledge, his face to the rock, his left hand gripping a shoot of mountain laurel, his right groping the upper rocks. The old man saw the shrub jerk loose, moss, roots and all—he held his breath for the coming crash—it was all over. Wayland's left arm flung out to ward off the spatter of small stones; then, the right arm had clutched the spindly bole of a creeping juniper—his body lurched out, hung, swayed, lifted; and the Ranger disappeared ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... at last, but I have now thrown a few inches too far; my tail fly is in the bush, dangling across an overhanging bough. An impatient movement, a jerk, or a straight pull, and I am "hung up," as is the phrase, and delayed for half an hour at least. Happily there is a lull in the storm. I shake the point of the rod. The vibration runs along the line; the fly drops softly like ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... to cut shaped pieces as well as straight. You cannot break these directly the cut is made, but, holding the glass as in fig. 12, and pressing it firmly with the left thumb, jerk the tool up by little, sharp jerks of the fingers only, so as to tap along the underside of your cut. You will see a little silver line spring along the cut, showing that the glass is dividing; and when that silver line has sprung ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... cab pulled up with a jerk. I paid the man, and we commenced to climb up the stone steps towards our rooms. Isobel, who was generally a couple of flights ahead, slipped her hand through my arm and ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... declivity, then hit water with a splash, and began to flounder forward. The water rose high enough to cover the floor of the Invigorator, causing the Captain to speculate on whether Redmond had packed in the shells properly. Then the bow rose with a mighty jerk and we scrambled out ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... the midst of which shoot up two long feathers, one green and one red, while behind hangs down a greasy, floury mass gathered at the end into a club-like handle, which has some fitness for its place, in suggesting that it should be used to jerk the heap of hair, grease, and feathers from the head of the unfortunate who sustains it. Just think of it! that sweet creature must have given up at least two hours of every day to this disfigurement ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... the two, while the sweet summer scents stole in at the window,—the breath of the cinnamon rose, of growing, grass and good brown earth. Mrs. Pettis pondered, looking vacantly before her, and Old Lady Lamson knit hastily on. Her needles clicked together, and she turned her work with a jerk in beginning a row. But neither was oppressed by lack of speech. They understood each other, and no more thought of "making talk" than of pulling up a seed to learn whether it had germinated. It was Mrs. Pettis who, after, a natural interval; felt ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... alkali. I repeat, farm-husbandry, in its highest scientific terms, was my genius, and is my genius. And yet the state, which includes all the citizens of the state, believes that it can blot out this wisdom of mine in the final dark by means of a rope about my neck and the abruptive jerk of gravitation—this wisdom of mine that was incubated through the millenniums, and that was well-hatched ere the farmed fields of Troy were ever pastured by the ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... shake of head. The officer selected one of the small tubes, snapped off the protecto-nib, and set it between his lips for a satisfying and lengthy pull. Then the panel of the cabin door pushed open, and Vye sat up with a jerk as Ras Hume, his head banded with a ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... among the branches, with a good deal of the upper part of his body under water, and when at length he emerged there was a big, gleaming fish in one hand. Ida saw him jerk its head back, with his fingers in its gills, and then, standing upright, he hurled ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... and held on the same course until abreast of the perch, which was only a forked stick. The men came aft and hauled in the mizzen sheet. Chambers put up the helm. The mizzen came across with a jerk, and the sheet was again allowed to run out. The jib came over with a report like the shot of a cannon, and at the same ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... down her embroidery with a jerk and pressed a hand spasmodically to her brow. "Don't you think it's dreadfully ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... in the pit, boss! Folks back home wouldn't never believe me if Mr. Agnew hadn't promised to take some pictures of me and my boat. That's an awful good boat, the Mary, boss. She is some boat! Did you see me jerk ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... forefinger into the cheek, and pulled out his enormous quid of tobacco. "There now, I'm ready, and don't be afraid of choking me." One of the attendants then thrust several pieces of gold into the sailor's mouth, who spitting them all out into his hat, jumped on his legs, made a jerk of his head with a kick of the leg behind to the pacha; and declaring that he was the funniest old beggar he had ever fallen in with, nodded to Mustapha, and hastened out ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... step thither, and we will wash him out of hand." Arrived at the well, they found that the rope was still there, but the bucket had been removed; so they determined to attach him to the rope, and lower him into the well, there to wash himself, which done, he was to jerk the rope, and they would draw him up. Lowered accordingly he was; but just as, now washen, he jerked the rope, it so happened that a company of patrols, being thirsty because 'twas a hot night and some rogue had led them a pretty dance, came to the well to drink. The two men fled, ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... or had a fall off, then I would be prepared. So forthwith I drew the rifle out of the scabbard, remembering as I did so that Haught had cautioned me, in case of close quarters with a bear and the need of quick shooting, to jerk the lever down hard. If my horse had cut up abominably before he now began to cover himself with a glory of abominableness. I had to jam him through the thickets. He was an uncomfortable horse to ride ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... credit men a customer's automobile-riding inspires as much confidence as his betting on the horse races, and when Morris climbed into the tonneau he paid little attention to Abe's instructions, so busy was he glancing around him for prying credit men. At length, with a final jar and jerk the machine sprang forward, and for the rest of the journey Morris' mind was emptied of every other apprehension save that engendered of passing trucks or street cars. Finally, the machine drew up in front of the Prince William and Morris scrambled out, trembling in every limb. He made ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... I slowed her up a bit in the canon that I noticed something the matter with her. She dropped her steady gait and began to jerk and halt. The fire-box clogged and the steam began to drop, and when I reached a fairly long piece of road in the dark and silent canon, she refused to recover. She spit out the steam and gurgled and coughed, and nothing that I could do would coax ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... a hand gallop. You would think, from the way he sets out, that he was going to race around the whole orchard, and probably he thinks he is himself. But by the time he is fairly under full headway, his rope tightens up with a jerk, and away he goes heels over head. The only difference is, that Halicarnassus knows the length of his tether, and always fetches up in time to escape an overturn; but other people do not know it, and they imagine he is going pell-mell into ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... one side, of course carrying the kayak with him, until his body lay on the water, in which position he maintained himself and prevented a total overset by manipulating his paddle, and then, with a downward dash of the blade and a vigorous jerk of his body, he regained his position, amid expressions of approval from the shore. Having performed the same feat on the other side, he nodded ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... receiving the ticket and shutting the carriage-door gently, with a bow and a smile and another touch of his cap; and, the next moment, with another sharp unearthly shriek of the steam-whistle similar to that which had heralded its entrance into Havant station, the train, giving a joggle and a jerk as it got under way, was speeding along again, across the rattling bridges that spanned the moats of the fortifications and through the Portsea lines, to the ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... is eventually handed over to the Hunyas or Jumlis or Humlis, who on these occasions benefit by the simplicity and superstition of the Shokas, and who throw it down, rip the body open, and pull out the heart, or twist it in the inside with a jerk that kills instantly. This method applies to ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... what it is!" cried Bobby as soon as Bucephalus had approached within hearing distance. "You got to practise until your forefinger works all by itself—entirely separate from the rest of your arm. Then the rifle won't jerk sideways so much." ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... slower and slower still until there ensued a long pause, during which I heard the mate encouraging the crew to a special effort by shouting: "Heave, boys! heave and raise the dead! break him out! another pawl! heave!" and so on; then there occurred a sudden wrenching jerk, followed by a shout of triumph from the crew, the windlass pawls resumed their clanking at a rapid rate for a few minutes longer when they finally ceased, and I knew that our anchor was a-trip and that we had started on our ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... fishing proved so uninteresting. Then there was a terrible jerk on her line, followed by a steady pull. Beth was afraid the alligator had swallowed the line, and that she would be dragged into the river. Nevertheless, she hung ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... says Tommy, emancipating his head with a little jerk, and looking at Sir George with ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... to her room, and bade her good night. Ann Harriet had the usual share of curiosity which all females—even plump ones—possess; and wishing to know how a Boston street appeared in the evening, she hoisted the curtain with a vigorous jerk, and looked forth: it was not a very beautiful scene; long rows of brick houses stretched away on either side, relieved at intervals by the street lamps and loafers, which, as they appeared at a distance, reminded her of a torchlight ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... checks, and when the dealer made a turn he would have to rise from his seat to see if my bet was coppered or not. If the card lost that we were on, I would let the copper remain; if it on, I gave the horse hair a little jerk and pulled the copper off, and we both won. I used to take it off when he was going to pay the bet, for fear he would get his fingers tangled in the hair; and in this way we won the bank roll, which made the Frenchman ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... also and Walter were seated as far apart from their father and from each other as was possible, and for a few moments not a word was spoken. Then, suddenly remembering himself, the squire dismissed the paper from his hand with an irritable jerk, and, with the words, "I suppose that means dinner," gave his arm to his sister, and conducted her in silence to ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... the centre of the stage, looked sternly at the people, and addressed them as "Fellow Citizens." He belaboured the small table; he rose on tiptoe and fell upon his heels; often he seemed to fling his words with a rapid jerk of his right arm as one hurls a pebble. It was all in praise of his "young friend," the teacher, and the high talent of ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... to work To move the stubborn lid; And, presently, a mighty jerk The mighty mischief did; For all at once, ah! woeful case! The snuff came puffing ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... can prevent his rude machine from following their track; and the fisherman is sometimes, in consequence, carried out a great distance to sea. It requires considerable dexterity to secure these monsters; for when they are hauled up near to the skins, they struggle a good deal, and if they happen to jerk the fisherman from his seat, the infuriate monster dashes at once at him. Many accidents arise in this manner; but if they succeed in getting him quickly alongside, they soon despatch him by a ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... wound the halter about the tree that he could go neither back nor forwards, nor so much as put down his head to browse. There he stood, poor rogue, part puzzled, part angry, part, I believe, amused. He had not given up hope, and dully revolved the problem in his head, giving ever and again another jerk at the few inches of free rope that still remained unwound. A humorous sort of sympathy for the creature took hold upon me. I went up, and, not without some trouble on my part, and much distrust and resistance on the part of Neddy, got him forced backwards until ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with it—" That did jerk them all up short. For Van Rycke to leave the Queen—that was as unthinkable as if Captain Jellico had suddenly announced that he was about to retire and become a kelp farmer. "Just for the one trip," the Cargo-master hastened to assure them. "I smooth their vector with the storm ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... collar, cut-away coat, speckled-trout waistcoat—everything perfect)—who stood, paring his nails in front of the plate-glass window overlooking the street, and who conveyed news of the elder Breen's whereabouts by a bob of his head and a jerk of his fat forefinger in the direction ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... foreign body in a lady, aged about forty years, who, while "picking" her left ear with a so-called "invisible hair-pin" several hours before the consultation, had heard a sudden "twang" in the ear, as if the hair-pin had broken. And so, indeed, it had; for on the instant she had attempted to jerk it quickly from the ear the sharp extremity of the inner portion of its lower prong sprang away from its fellow, penetrated the soft tissues of the floor of the external auditory canal, and remained imbedded ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... and even about the pony at Braemarnie, she began now and then to break into a little hop herself and presently into sudden ripples of laughter like a bird's brief bubble of song. The tall lady's hand was not like Andrews, or the hand of Andrews' sister. It did not pull or jerk and it had a lovely feeling. The sensation she did not know was happiness again welled up within her. Just one walk round the Garden and then the tall lady sat down on a seat to watch them play. It was wonderful. She did not read or work. ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Instantly at the lucky hackle something darted, seized it, and whirled to fly, with the unwholesome bit in its mouth, up the peaceful Ayboljockameegus. But the lucky man, and he happened to be the novice, forgot, while giving the capturing jerk of his hook, that his fulcrum was not solid rock. The slight shell tilted, turned—over not quite, over enough to give everybody a start. One lesson teaches the docile. Caution thereafter presided ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... car forward, temper in every crisp movement, his gaze travelling over the empty tiers of seats, to fall at last upon Gerard and there rest. With a jerk he jammed down the brake and leaned from the machine. Thick fair hair lay across his boyish forehead above level dark brows, his candid dark-blue eyes went direct to their goal: the metal badge fastened to Gerard's lapel and just visible under the ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... the line, which tightened as if it had been screwed by a peg, and Rob felt a jerk up his arms anything but pleasant to his muscles; while, in spite of his efforts, the line began to run through his fingers as jerk succeeded jerk. But the excitement made him hold on and give out as slowly ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... avenue with its solemn files of gigantic timber towering at the right and the left hand, the chaise rolled smoothly, and through the fantastic iron gate of the courtyard, and with a fine swinging sweep and a jerk, we drew up handsomely before the door-steps, with the Wylder arms in bold and florid projection ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... driver's seat, and seeing neither his friend nor his enemy, saw the light with the bicycle behind it go over with a crash. That was when Varney's hands let go of the handle-bars. The next instant they fell upon Hammerton's withdrawing figure and brought it up with a sharp jerk. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... before the words "Miss Conway," and uttered them with evident repugnance. They issued from his lips, indeed, with a species of jerk; and he seemed glad to get rid of them, if I may ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... beneath his feet at last—Red-beard had forced him to the exact spot he desired to reach—Gregory's muscles contracted with a jerk. He stopped retreating and began to slide around the islander. If he was successful in carrying out his plan it was best to have Red-beard on ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... pulled and looking up would see the face of Mr. Pulcifer solemnly gazing over his head at the rows of letter boxes. Apparently Raish was quite unconscious of the little man's presence, but there would come another tug at the coat-tail and a barely perceptible jerk of the ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... must have thought the way I do, I am sure," persisted Adnah. The remark brought Aunt Matilda out of the past with a jerk. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... and backed against a bushy willow, he could not have explained. However, because he did so the loop of hide rope meant for his throat hit his shoulder harmlessly. It fell to the ground, and he stamped one boot down on it. Then it was the work of seconds to grasp it and give it a quick jerk. The surprised man who held the other end was brought sprawling ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... were they ever at school, but if they ever traveled in a railroad car, or whether they suppose their hearers to be so ignorant of the most common facts as to believe that there is no way of bringing a carriage to a stand but by a sudden jerk, or that God is more stupid than the brakeman of an express train. We will do them the justice, however, to say, that they did not invent it, but merely shut their eyes, and opened their mouths, and swallowed it for philosophy, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... very slowly, and much time was occupied before we could get a hawser to her. I could do no good after having made a chart of the soundings round the ship, and went at last on to the bridge to sketch the scene. But at that moment the strain from the winch and a jerk from the Turkish steamer got off the boat, after we had been some hours aground. The carpenter reported that she had made only two inches of water in one compartment; the cable was still uninjured astern, and our ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the missive in the possession of Jaime, on whose every gesture and movement he kept a vigilant watch. At the same instant that the letter was deposited in the gipsy's pocket, Paco thrust both his hands through the grass, seized the naked ankles of the esquilador in a vicelike grip, and by a sudden jerk throwing him upon his back, proceeded to drag him through the aperture, behind which he himself was stationed. His strength and adroitness, and the suddenness of the attack, ensured its success; and in spite of the gipsy's struggles, Paco speedily ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... see his efforts to eat currants from the hand. He would run out his tongue and try to stick it to the currant; failing in that, he would bend his tongue around it like a hook and try to raise it by a sudden jerk. But he never succeeded, the round fruit would roll and slip away every time. He never seemed to think of taking it in his beak. His tongue was in constant use to find out the nature of everything he saw; a nail-hole in a board or any similar hole was carefully explored. If he ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... blue ice they are pretty conspicuous, and as they are mostly snow-bridged one is well advised to step over any line of snow. With my short legs this was strenuous work, especially as the weight of the sledge would often stop me with a jerk just before my leading foot quite cleared a crevasse, and the next minute one would be struggling out so as to keep the sledge on the move. It is fatal to stop the sledge as nobody waits for stragglers, and you have to ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... Boy. But it was only the Colonel who hastened towards them at the summons. The poor girl's own father stood calmly smoking, up there, by the Kachime, one foot propped comfortably on the travellers' loaded sled. "Yagorsha!" he shouted again, and then, with a jerk to free himself from Muckluck, the Boy turned sharply towards the ighloo, seeming in a bewildered way to be, himself, about to transact this paternal business for the cowardly old loafer. But Muckluck clung ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... he wants to disable us. He is one of those pestilently persistent fellows who won't take a hint and sheer off; he is as full of obstinacy as was the mammoth that chased me over yonder,"—with a jerk of his thumb toward the north—"on our first trip, and must be treated as we treated that mammoth. For if we don't kill him, he will kill us—if he can. You see? ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... wagon started. Alongside of the great, hard-mouthed and long-haired horse that drew the cart, walked the commissioner, in order, once in a while, when they had to turn a corner, to seize the bridle and give it a powerful jerk. At the side of the wagon strode Simon, keeping a watchful eye upon his possessions, and carefully setting every thing aright which was in danger of being shaken off upon the pavement. Above in the carriage near the great basket sat Jeanne Marie, the former knitter of the guillotine. Her naked ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... while under her muffling shawl in silent apathy undisturbed, and as during the latter stages of the drive a blinking drowsiness co-operated with her want of interest in the scenes through which she jogged, she naturally looked around her in bewilderment when roused by the jerk of the stopping cart. She expected to find herself in the streets of Moynalone, drawn up, probably, at the door of the big Union workhouse. But, instead of its long rows of casements staring down blankly on her, she saw only the one mole's-eye window of a tiny whitewashed ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... he gave a vigorous jerk at the left-hand rein, which caused the mare to wheel about and face Rivermouth. She hesitated an ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... funnel, or siphon. Now the Octopus can make good use of this siphon. Sometimes he is attacked, and wishes to "make himself scarce." So he sends the water rapidly through the siphon; the force is enough to jerk him quickly backwards, ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... to free herself, he contrived to draw his knife, and to cut off one of the stay-ropes of his tent. With this he bound her wrists together behind her back, and passed the end round a stout trunk of willow. The instant he stood back she flung herself forward on the rope, but the jerk on her arms must have nearly dislocated them. It brought a shriek of pain from her. She came to a standstill, ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... uttered with a sudden jerk, and as she spoke them she plunged her hands into the dirt, and bringing up a double handful, cast it with a spiteful fling upon the neat little black shoes. Woe to white stockings, if they had been visible; but Daisy's shoes came up high ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... quickly but softly, as far from you as you can on the water. Neatly done! Now draw it slowly along the surface, and you shall presently see a fish rise at it. Be more moderate; you draw it too rapidly. Ha! there it goes under! Wait till you feel him pulling on the line; now give him a little jerk to the right; there you have him, fairly hooked! You must be careful, or you'll lose him yet. No; he's not very heavy, and you may raise him strait out of the water, and land ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... no nervousness now; body and soul, she was as hard as steel. The general looked down upon her in petrified bewilderment. He gazed at the three soldiers, and again looked down at her. 'Girl!' he thundered, 'what do you mean? Let go my horse!' As he said these words he gave his bridle a jerk; but the noble steed paid no attention to his master. He was not afraid of girls. In former days he had learned to like them; to him a girl meant sugar and savory clover-tops. He bent his head toward Almia, and instantly her hand was in her pocket and she ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... house, where mother could come and stay with me, for two or three months at a time, and get clear away from the worries of house-keeping and—" the tyranny of father, I am about to add, but pull myself up with a jerk, and substitute lamely ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Tom's overcoat, almost tearing the buttons off. Another masterful jerk and his victim's jacket was likewise parted widely. He did not lower the club for an instant. He thrust his left hand into the V-shaped parting of ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... announced the insolent Jack-in-office, tossing back the card. He scented a possible successor in this vulpine-looking young stranger. But Einstein resolutely came back to the charge. "It's his business, and he'll jerk you out of your job if you throw me down. I will not stir a step till I see ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... he said after a few strokes with a jerk of his head towards the dark longshore houses, "you don't often see nor hear about outside o' the Bible; a deserted city. Fine pickings for Boney if ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... be regarded as considered on good authority to be efficacious in producing an erect carriage. Stand as upright as you can, your arms against your side, the forearm at right angles, as before, and jerk your elbows downward ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... that the troubled little woman was saying fixed her attention, pulling up her wandering thoughts with a jerk. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... little shake, and, if it had been given in good temper, would not have struck Winnie as anything but a pleasant joke. But he knew, from Gypsy's face, it was no joke; and, feeling his dignity insulted, down he went flat upon the floor with a scream and a jerk that sent two fresh buttons flying off from ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... iron fell right where I was standing," muttered Trent. "Darrin, I wondered why on earth you should jerk me back and lay me out in that unceremonious fashion. If you hadn't done it the cookstove would have crushed my bones ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... a word of it, ma'am," says cook, with virtuous indignation. "Just because she holds up her head a bit, an' likes a ribbon or two, there's no holdin' the gossips down below," indicating the village by a backward jerk of her thumb. "She's as dacent a little sowl as you'd wish to see, an' has as nate a foot as there is in the county. The Cantys has all a character ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... gold. Feeling free to approach the now open jars with a light it was seen that a portion of, the belt protruded above the liquid. A cord with a sailor slip knot was lowered over the extended bit of leather, drawn taut with a jerk and the belt was slowly lifted out. A folded blanket had been placed on the floor to receive it. As Ned expected, the leather crumbled and broke like glass as the belt fell ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... lay in his bed listening to the bird which was singing its very best. Suddenly it stopped with a jerk, and bang! something had snapped in its inside, and all its wheels ran down with a whirr, and then there was ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... indispensable must be thrown overboard!' Their provisions, oars and helm were thrown out into the sea. They were now only 100 metres in height. 'We are remounting,' said the Doctor.—' No, it is the jerk caused by the diminution of weight. There is not a ship in sight! Not a bark on the horizon! To the sea with our garments!' And the unfortunate men stripped, but the balloon continued to descend. 'Blanchard,' said Jefferies, 'you were to have ...
— A Voyage in a Balloon (1852) • Jules Verne
... make his acknowledgments, he saw the two persons in full retreat; the profane old scoundrel in the bottle-green limping and stumbling, yet bowling along at a wonderful rate, with many a jerk and reel, and the slender lady in black gliding away by his side into the inner ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... said Diana, speaking with a sort of jerk, and her small face turning crimson, "whatever happens, ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... numerous. Amongst the adults (both sexes) they knock out the four front teeth of the upper jaw; but there are others both male and female that are quite perfect, more here than noticed anywhere else on the journey. Killed a sheep on arrival here today to jerk for our coming journey to the east, but was so fat that the small flock had to be examined for a poorer one for that purpose. That does not speak badly of the part of the country we are ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... So it had come already. She stopped for a moment in the hall to gather her forces. Her feeling of penitence vanished. She threw up her head with a defiant jerk and walked boldly into the little office where Grace sat making up her ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... frightened oath, the postilion pulled up with a jerk, but as the chaise came to a standstill a window rattled down. Then Barnabas lowered the pistol, and coming up beside the chaise looked down into the troubled face of my Lady Cleone. And her checks were very pale in the light of the lanterns, and upon her dark lashes was ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... point of stepping out into the road again when a horseman rode into sight between the two rocks. In the same instant of his appearance she heard the unmistakable crack of a gun, saw the rider jerk backward in the saddle, throw up one hand—and then the darkness ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... though with terror. "Oh, those rats!" Then she got up hesitatingly. She sat down again, as if undecided—she fell back almost heavily into her chair; but then she gave herself a jerk. She rose quickly, went up to her husband, and sat down on ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... himself could have had in the circumstances. At last somebody threw the barge-master a bag of something (fortunately soft) which he was leaving behind, and which he chucked on to the top of my head. Then the driver called to his horse, and the barge gave a jerk, which threw Fred on to the pie, and in a moment more we were gliding slowly and ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... Molly standing like a figure of rock, as if she sensed his mood. He swung her about on her hind legs with a wrench on the curb and a lift of his spurs, but when she leaped into a gallop he brought her back to the walk with a cruel jerk; she began to sidle across the field with her chin drawn almost back to her breast, prancing. That movement of the horse brought him half way around towards the door and he was tempted mightily to look, for he knew that Betty Neal was standing there, begging him with her ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... triumph, came a crowd of men, half-dragging a prisoner, a rope around his waist, his arms pinioned. The man's face was white, his clothing disheveled and torn. His resistance was passive—no word of entreaty or explanation escaped his lips. A sudden jerk on the rope from the hundred hands that clutched it threw the man off his feet—he fell headlong, his face struck the stones of the pavement, and he was dragged for twenty yards. The crowd grabbed at him and lifted him to his feet—blood dripped from his face, his hat ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... he was getting near the end of his journey for, contrary to expectation, he did "giddap" with a jerk which nearly unseated the doctor and caused a flicker of mild surprise to flit across ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... punkah-pullers, sweepers, police peons, the coxswain and crew of the harbour steam-launch, all craning their necks and almost climbing on each other's backs. Quite a riot. By that time the fellow had managed to tug and jerk his hat clear of his head, and advanced with slight bows at Ruthvel, who told me the sight was so discomposing that for some time he listened, quite unable to make out what that apparition wanted. It spoke in a voice harsh and lugubrious but intrepid, ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... herself free with a violent jerk, and pushed him from her. She did not storm. She did not even rise. She sat very quietly, breathing fast. When she turned at last to look at the boy beside her it seemed that her white profile cut the darkness. The man shrank ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... raising his powerful head with a jerk, "But tactics are not of such importance as they were. I think the thing is done—done!" he repeated ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... little jerk, a noise like champagne being uncorked in another room, and a faint whistling sound. For just one instant I had a sense of enormous tension, a transient conviction that my feet were pressing downward with a force of countless tons. It lasted for ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... fortune-teller. It has been said before that her bony fingers closed upon his arms in a far from feeble manner. He had no time for surprise at this sudden recovery; there was only time to see a fiendish grin flash into her face. The next instant something struck him in the face; then with a fierce jerk this same object tightened about his neck. His attempt to yell out was checked before a sound ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the boys the mate had sent aloft on the mizzen to do something, came down on the poop-deck—thump—right in front of me. He was not much older than myself. We had been grinning at each other only a few minutes before. He must have been handling himself carelessly, not expecting to get such a jerk. I heard his startled cry—Oh!—in a high treble as he felt himself going, and looked up in time to see him go limp all over as he fell. Ough! Poor father was remarkably white about the gills when we shook hands in Gravesend. 'Are you all right?' he ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... "take hold of the rope, but be gentle about it. Remember, a sharp jolt might be a serious thing for Tommy. It might jerk Miss Elting over, too, so be very careful. Now, Tommy, we are going to pull you up. Don't reach for the rock. It won't help you any to do so. Just hang limp. Try to imagine that you are a bag of meal and we are pulling you up for the ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... often of the trip, and it seems hard for pilots and captains always to be on their guard against a decoy. At this landing the signal was given, all as it should be, and we were just rounding to, when, with a sudden jerk, the boat swung round into the stream again. The mistake was discovered in time, by a government officer on board, and we escaped an ambush. Just think! we might have been prisoners in Mississippi now, but God meant better things for ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... for, as he pulled the thread through with a triumphant jerk, the small sailmaker lost his balance, tumbled over, and lay staring up at the tall man with his blue eyes so wide open, they looked as if they would never shut again. All of a sudden, he shouted, with a joyful shout, 'Daddy's tummin'!' ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... to such a degree that he invariably fell asleep upon his mule after smoking innumerable cigarettes. In these cases his long body swayed to the right and left, and occasionally nodded forward to an extent that sometimes awoke him with the jerk; after which spasmodic return of consciousness an immediate relapse took place, and he fell asleep again. As he rode directly before me, as guide, this chronic somnolency was most annoying, and I had to drive his mule into a faster walk by poking ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... obliquely, and pointing forward; then the hand, extended open and drawn to the breast, and lastly the sign for bringing, as follows: The hand half shut, with the thumb pressing against the forefinger, being first moderately extended either to the right or left, is brought with a moderate jerk to the opposite side, as if something was pulled ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... recoiled, and stepped into the roadway in order to pass him. Indignant at this attempt to ignore him, he again placed himself in her path, and was repeating his question with increased sternness, when a jerk in the pit of his stomach caused him a severe internal qualm, besides disturbing his equilibrium so rudely that he narrowly escaped a fall against the curb-stone. When he recovered himself he saw before him a showily dressed young ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... great church clock seemed to sound the dirge of our hopes. Lestrade and Mycroft were fidgeting in their seats and looking twice a minute at their watches. Holmes sat silent and composed, his eyelids half shut, but every sense on the alert. He raised his head with a sudden jerk. ...
— The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans • Arthur Conan Doyle
... went forward and commenced a series of experiments with levers and brake, in which process incidentally he liberated a quantity of sand onto the rails. A moment later the car lurched forward, and then stopped with a jerk. ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... all the way into the bargain. There Miller stands in the stern—and a devilish easy thing it is to stand there and walk into us—I can see him chuckle as he comes to you and me, Brown—'Now, 2, well forward;' '3, don't jerk;' 'Now 2, throw your weight on the oar; come, now, you can get another pound on.' I hang on like grim Death,—then its ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... to one side, reached into a pocket and, taking out a snuff-stick and a parcel of its attendant compound, began to take a dip of snuff, after the habit of certain of the population of that region. This done, she turned with a swift jerk of the head, bringing to bear the tube of her bonnet in full force ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... guess. And it's well this cord of Uncle Zack's was rotten, or the sail would have been too much for my pull.' One of the ropes stretching the lower side of the blanket had snapped under the sudden pressure of Sam Holt's vigorous jerk round, and thereby lessened the ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... keep them together—were employed. The lesser loop—the slip-knot, as it might be called—was at the same time eased in order to run quicker and take a closer grip. Experiments with the hand proved that this style of wire would bear a great strain, and immediately answered to a sudden jerk. The running noose slipped the more easily because the wires were smooth; when twisted the strands checked the noose, the friction causing a slight sound. The wire itself seemed nearly perfect; but still ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... ye gods! I am a locomotive!" This was his ruling hallucination; and, for the space of two or three hours, he continued to pace to and fro with a measured stride, exhaling his breath in violent jets, and when he spoke, dividing his words into syllables, each of which he brought out with a jerk, at the same time turning his hands at his sides, as if they were the cranks of imaginary wheels, The Englishman, as soon as he felt the dose beginning to take effect, prudently retreated to his own room, and what the nature of his visions was, ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... seemed to jerk the disreputable, loose-jointed frame of Larry the Bat suddenly erect—and a strained whiteness crept over the ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... take the bit in his teeth, but with a sharp jerk as he drove the spurs in, Vincent had defeated his intention. He now did not attempt to check or guide him, but keeping a light hand on the reins let him go his own course. Vincent knew that so long as the horse was going full speed it could attempt no trick to unseat him, and ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... practice, she adjusts the loop rapidly round her, and calls on the crew to hoist away. The boat heels over to one side as she vigorously pushes herself away from it, and souse the old dame goes up to her waist in the water; the good-natured sailors give an extra jerk, and up she comes, with baskets tied round her waist, and her feet acting as fenders against the side of the ship. Fortunately the Teutonic is bulky enough to resist heeling over under this extra weight on the starboard ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... road, he had his albatross placed on a cart and set off, with a peasant driver, against the wind. At the outset the machine was fastened to the cart by a rope running through the rails on which the machine rested, and secured by a slip knot on Le Bris's own wrist, so that only a jerk on his part was necessary to loosen the rope and set the machine free. On each side walked an assistant holding the wings, and when a turn of the road brought the machine full into the wind these men were instructed to let go, while the driver increased the pace from a walk to a trot. ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... into Farquaharson's room and grinned as he tossed a magazine down on the table. "Sic fama est" was his comment, and Stuart picked up the sheet which his visitor indicated with a jerk of the thumb. The magazine was a weekly devoted ostensibly to the doings of smart society, but its real distinction lay in its innuendo and its genius for sailing so close to the wind of libel that those who moved in the rarified air of exclusiveness read it with a delicious and shuddering ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... the carriage is now changed into a non-uniform motion, as for instance by a powerful application of the brakes, then the occupant of the carriage experiences a correspondingly powerful jerk forwards. The retarded motion is manifested in the mechanical behaviour of bodies relative to the person in the railway carriage. The mechanical behaviour is different from that of the case previously ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... by a friend to George, that whipp'd Jack, (52) that whipp'd the breech, That whipp'd the nation as long as it could stand over it - after which It was itself re-jerk'd by the sage author of this speech: "Methinks a Rump should go as well with a Scotch spur as with a switch." From ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... Rogers could not execute the imaginative exercise I prescribed; so he strapped my hold-all with an extra jerk. ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
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