"Shaky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Dick, and his own whisper was a little shaky. "It's one thing to see a grizzly in a cage, and another to see him out here in the dark in these wild mountains. And that fellow must weigh ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... happening to us," contended Eph Somers, somewhat shaky in his tones. "It's just thinking what might happen—if we were to strike a water-logged old hull ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... veering round towards Folly Bridge, which our hero at first failed to overcome; and it was not until he had performed a considerable amount of crab-catching, that he was enabled to steer himself in the proper direction. Charles Larkyns had taken his seat in an outrigger skiff (so frail and shaky that it made Verdant nervous to look at it), and, with one or two powerful strokes, had shot ahead, backed water, turned, and pulled back round the tub long before Verdant had succeeded in passing that eccentric mansion, to which allusion has before been made, as possessing in the place of cellars, ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... farmhouse had gathered behind us in the field. I turned and looked at them. They were smiling. So I summoned a shaky smile myself and refused the hospitality of the cellar full ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... going to meet the express. But surely in the thickness of the wall there must be here and there recesses? I was sure I had seen one, some little time back, when I had struck a light. This was a gleam of hope. Out came the matches once more, but my hands were so shaky that I had scarcely opened the box when it slipped from my fingers and its precious contents were scattered on the ground. This was a new trouble. I was down upon my knees at once, groping about to find them. It was a hopeless task in the ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... left hand holding check, right hand grasping glass, focusing the glass upon the name signed to the check. This shows that the name has been written in a very shaky hand. ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... black tea, good quality—yours is generally atrocious, Mrs. Oswald—that's the next thing on the list,' said poor trembling, shaky Miss Luttrell, the Squire's sister, a palsied old lady with a quavering, querulous, rasping voice. 'Two pounds of best black tea, and mind you don't send it all dust, as you usually do. No good tea to be got nowadays, since they took the duties off and ruined the country. And I ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... a poor and shaky thing at best, likely to tumble in a high wind—but some work has gone into it," said the old gentleman. "You see these white pages are rather spotted, but when I look over the history of my spirit, as I do now and then, ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... softly. He'd faced death a hundred times during the war without showing fear; this was no time to start. What would his men think of him if they saw him getting shaky over the mere ...
— Viewpoint • Gordon Randall Garrett
... sees the story all right," he groaned. "I don't know whether it's that ice-water or the drink, but my arms are so shaky I can't ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... when it seems to office persons that the day's work never will end, even by a miracle, Mr. Wrenn was shaky about his duty to the firm. He was more so after an electrical interview with the manager, who spent a few minutes, which he happened to have free, in roaring "I want to know why" at Mr. Wrenn. There was no particular "why" that he wanted to know; he was merely getting scientific ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... the veteran. "He had a report from his detectives, who had been watching Enderby for months.... Mrs. Eyre, I wish you'd give me a drink. I feel shaky." ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... good sense and manliness," said the Doctor gruffly. "I wish every one else had been as wise. I wish all of us had big paying shops at our backs instead of Carey's shaky bank. I for one would swallow the indignity cheerfully. Why, my father kept on his dispensary in the days when the practice was at its best. The greater fool I to give it up. I tell you England will ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... deadly black and brown snakes. They have made this old, time-forgotten cemetery their own favourite haunting place; for the waters of the creek are near, and on its margin they find their prey. Once, so the shaky old wharfinger will tell you, a naval lieutenant, who had been badly wounded in the first Maori war, died in the commandant's house. He was buried here on the bank of the creek, and one day his young wife who had come from England to nurse ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... him with a white face, apparently dazed, and replied in a shaky voice: "Can you give me a hand, sir? Look at this!" and unshipping one of his lamps he turned the light ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... become positively virulent in the two weeks that had passed since the destruction of the major food cache. Dr. Smathers was losing weight from his excess, but his heretofore pampered stomach was voicelessly screaming along his nerve passages, and his fingers had become shaky, which is unnerving in a surgeon, so his temper was no better ...
— Cum Grano Salis • Gordon Randall Garrett
... do something," she said with a shaky smile. "I feel just as they do. This morning I hated the thought of having to go back to my boarding-house to-night, but right now I feel as if the odor of cabbage in the hallway ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... budding experimentalist! My poor nose!" Master's voice was shaky with laughter. "Why don't you go to bed? Is the whole world going to change for you? Change yourself: be rid ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... all right but your infantry was no good." I began to feel shaky again. However, he ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... rate, you can judge for yourself, as we are due to see him within half an hour. You must tell him that you are a naturalist, as he intends writing a book, in which a great deal of space will be given to animals. He said he felt a 'bit shaky on his pins' when it ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... will know better presently, for here we are," Uncle Harry said gently; and in a few minutes more they were all in a shabby, shaky, but roomy old ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... nights; the fourth, in a cot slung up to the boom, and though I slept little, it was cool. Last night I came down to the cabin again. I have taken the turn, and am on the mend, though I do not yet feel the least inclination for food, and my nerves are so shaky that I can hardly write. That little pretty book[7] of Guizot's which you sent me, I have been trying to read, but I find that it is too touching for me, and I have been ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... where some of the articles are positively known to be late translations of French-English originals, and the others are very uncertain. You really cannot found any safe literary generalisations on so very small a basis of such very shaky matter. In fact, Mr Arnold's argument for the presence of "Celtic magic," &c., in Celtic poetry comes to something like this. "There is a quality of magic in Shakespeare, Keats, &c.; this magic must be Celtic: therefore it must be in Celtic poetry." Fill up the double enthymeme who list, I am not ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... up awkwardly and leaned upon the table, breathing rather hard while big drops of sweat started from his forehead. "This confounded ague grips me tight. Don't know when I've felt so shaky. Better give ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... shaky around the hams an' knees," said Box Izard; "he's been a good figger, but even figgers can lie ef they stand ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... air when we moved, and far above the Harlem River, where birds sang under blue skies and the south breeze swept into our top-floor windows, we set up our household goods and gods once more. They were getting a bit shaky now, and bruised. The mirrors on sideboard and dresser had never been put on twice the same, and the middle leg of the dining-room table wobbled from having been removed so often. But we oiled out the mark and memory of the moving-man, bought new matting, and went into the ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... solitaire in their own compartment, and, crossing the swaying corridor, entered the state-room opposite. Miss Wilming was there, reading a novel, an enormous bunch of roses, a box of bonbons, and a tiny kitten on the table before her. The kitten was so young that it was shaky on its legs, and it wore very wide eyes and a ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... shaky and too faint for Mother Ceres to hear, for by this time she was many thousands of miles away making the corn ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... ugly job, Mr Jack, sir," said Ned, "and I feel precious shaky about my throwing, though there was a time when I'd hurl a cricket-ball with any man I knew. If they think they're coming nobbling us about with their war-clubs and getting nothing back, they're precious well mistaken, so scuffle up all you ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... You couldn't do better. Know old E.H. myself. Used to know him better—before he got rich. No—this way. Short cut. You got to get acquainted with your legs again, eh? Had a close call. A little shaky?" ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... chopped it from its roots, but had not yet removed it. By dint of much energy the girls lifted this, and pushed it over the water till part of it rested securely on an alder which grew on a little island in the midst. It made a rather shaky but perfectly possible bridge, if not for Fauvette, at least for Raymonde. The latter advanced upon it cautiously but courageously. She took three steps, almost slipped, but regained her balance by a miracle, grasped an overhanging bough of the alder, and set a ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... kind of shaky going over a high bridge in a train, but to be left standing in the middle ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... said Aunt Martha, her voice shaky, as she nestled her head close to the girl's. But her ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... me," he said, and, pausing, stretched out his hand to the washing-stand to pour himself out a glass of water—"I hope you'll stick by me. I'm so confoundedly shaky. Don't know what it is—look at my hand." He held out his hand, which shook ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... drink these cocktails," he said, watching the waiter approach. "Flying takes something out of you all the time, you know, Nora, and although when I am up my nerves are like a rock, I sometimes feel a little shaky at leave time." ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... letters begin more and more to show a change in his handwriting. He no longer wrote in his original firm, clear style, but in a crabbed, cramped manner. His words now were often difficult to decipher, and the letters of the words very shaky and undecided, bearing witness very plainly of the trembling hand of Age. After mentioning the immense number of letters which he had to answer, and how the trouble of replying was almost beyond his strength, he says, "The sister-like ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... other five bottles for me!" he cried in a shaky voice, and ran out, with me after him, forgetting his change and to shut the ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... side of a seedy house in a shabby street, slimy and straw-bestrewn. Yard is paved with lumpy, irregular cobbles, and some sooty and shaky-looking sheds stand at the bottom thereof. Enter together, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... her old teacher, had written to Ruth very kindly. There was a letter, too, from Aunt Alvirah, addressed in her old-fashioned hand, and its contents shaky both as to spelling and grammar, but full of love for the girl who was so greatly missed at the Red Mill. Uncle Jabez had even declared the first night that it seemed as though there had been a death in ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... much more than a shed. In the long low room a staircase twisted itself up oddly to the four rooms under the leaky roof. It was all empty and desolate, save for an old cot bed and a broken chair. The floors had a sagged, shaky appearance. The doors quaked when they were opened. The windows were cobwebby and dreary, yet it looked to the eyes of the new householder like a palace. He saw it in the light of future possibilities and gloried in it. That chimney place ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... few of the tools of his trade with him. He gathered handkerchiefs and Solange ripped open her flannel shirtwaist and tore the lingerie beneath it to furnish him additional cloth. She had collected herself and, although still shaky, was cool and efficient, her nurse's experience rendering the doctor invaluable aid. Together they soon stanched the bleeding and directed De Launay's removal to a near-by tent where he was laid upon ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... two fugitives rode through the cobbled streets of Kunitz. Priscilla was very shaky on a bicycle, and so was Fritzing. Some years before this, when it had been the fashion, she had bicycled every day in the grand ducal park on the other side of the town. Then, tired of it, she had given it up; and now for the last week or two, ever since Fritzing had ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... very commonplace man, cultivated, religious, "decent not to fail in offices of tenderness" like Telemachus, but for all that essentially parochial. His letters are heavy, uninteresting, banal, and reveal little except a very shaky taste in literature. The Essays which are reproduced, which he wrote for Birmingham literary societies, are of the same quality, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... said anything, so I kind o' give the speakin' trumpet, hangin' over my arm, a shake; it was 'most hid under the veil, you know; and then the door opened wider, and I see a woman. My! the palest, woe-begon'dest woman I'd ever see, 'most. "Oh!" she says, in a shaky, scairt sort o' voice, "come in quick." She looked so peaked and strange I jest stood starin' at her a minit, and all to once she reached out her hand and motioned to me; and as I stepped in she caught hold of the big end of the speakin' trumpet, and then I see that she thought I was ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... no sense," here interrupted Uncle, his voice evidently under control, but shaky. "I'd like to know where you were brought up. You learn it all wrong at them schools of yours, and you never get it right afterwards. You learn about the guts of engines and 'lectricity, and you mix it up with the tales your ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... to steady those shaky nerves of yours, Dawn," said Max, after I had made a shamefaced apology for my hysterical weeping, "I'm going to have Von Gerhard up here to look at you. He can ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... fingers to his lips, and uttered two sharp whistles. Bobby understood the signal, and came around the side of the house. He had carefully wiped away his tears, but his voice was rather shaky. ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... cried, stepping up to the seat, very shaky as to nerves and pale as death, "I may as well die from a fall as from a bullet or a knife. If Collins is coming back with the officers, I'll have to ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... stupid wonder. Then swiftly, more by intuition and that strange sense which recalls a previous happening by a touch, or a smell, than by actual memory, he saw that golden morning when he had stopped by the Molines' cabin and watched the great husky balance on his shaky legs. He had twirled in his fingers the first little spray of the saskatoon, brought in by Henri Corlier to show how the woods were answering the call ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... following day, more than pleased with his luck. Although he had by now fairly good and practical ideas in regard to the logging of a bunch of pine, he felt himself to be very deficient in the details. In fact, he anticipated his next step with shaky confidence. He would now be called upon to buy four or five teams of horses, and enough feed to last them the entire winter; he would have to arrange for provisions in abundance and variety for his men; he would have to figure on blankets, harness, cook-camp ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... had laid hold of me, but I thought it a very shaky hold—so much so that I was confident that I could break away from her, so that she could never ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... Church! Beyond doubt the Roman Church possessed an acknowledged primacy in the year 250; it was the primacy of active participation and fulfilled duty. As yet there was no recognised dogmatic or historic foundation assigned for it; in fact it is highly probable that this theory was still shaky and uncertain in Rome herself. The college of presbyters and deacons feels and speaks as if it were the bishop. For it was not on the bishop that the incomparable prestige of Rome was based—at least this ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... of the performers, both Canadian and British, was remarkable. It was always pleasant to live in the neighbourhood of a town, and the moment the men came out of the trenches they wanted to clean up and go into Bailleul. After a residence in the muddy and shaky little shacks in and behind the front lines, to enter a real house and sit on a real chair with a table in front of you ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... opposite. A woman looked out in the evening light, nodded and disappeared. A few seconds later she came out of the house, a quiet little middle-aged creature in brown, with intelligent eyes, and she crossed the shaky wooden bridge over the canal to come and bring Marietta home. It would have been a scandalous thing if the daughter of Angelo Beroviero had been seen by the neighbours to walk a score of paces in the street without an attendant. She had thrown a hood of dark green cloth over ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... last event properly ends our story, I shall only add, I believe in Kate, and so does my mother. She always calls me Ernest Thornton, in full. Though the Splash is now a little shaky in her timbers, she is still a good boat; and almost every pleasant afternoon in summer we sail over to Cannondale in her, Mr. and Mrs. Bob Hale being often passengers. We try to be faithful to each other, and strive to be good and ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... canoe is rather a shaky craft. When two or three are lashed together, and a native cot (charpai) is stretched across, the passenger can make himself very comfortable. The boats are poled by ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... Mr Vuffin, contemplating the fire with a sigh. 'Once get a giant shaky on his legs, and the public care no more about him than they do for a dead ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... his name. He was an old man, and very shaky on his pins. His hand trembled as with a palsy, especially noticeable when he poured his whiskey, though I never knew him to spill a drop. He had been twenty-eight years in Melanesia, ranging from German New Guinea to the German Solomons, and ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... up early in the evening in front of the entrance to the office, and bags and boxes were brought out and piled upon the seat beside the driver. We then half dragged, half lifted Hawkins up the stairs and on the roof by means of a shaky ladder and conducted him across the leads to the scuttle of the tenement-house. At this juncture, by prearrangement, three of our clerks, one of whom somewhat resembled Hawkins in size and who was arrayed in the latter's coat and hat, rushed out of the office and climbed ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... my shaving-water, and I scrambled—rather more feebly than I had expected— out of my bunk. The operation of dressing proved to be a considerably more lengthy one than I had anticipated, for I found that I was decidedly shaky on my legs, and I had to sit on the sofa and take a short rest at frequent intervals, with the result that the second dinner bell rang before I was ready to leave my cabin. I was not very late, however, arriving in the cuddy last, it is true, but in ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... found her widow, Mrs. Rollings, seated in the living room talking with James, who had an anxious look. Since opening the Pleasure Palace James was less regular at Chapel. And moreover, he was getting old and shaky, and Sunday was the one evening he might spend in peace. Add that on this particular black Sunday night it was sleeting dismally outside, and James had already a bit of a cough, and we shall see that he did ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... Aunt Jennie, and I am still shaky, and tearful, and though I try to write like a normal human being I am desirous of shrieking. There was just a slip and a fall, and a foot caught between two boulders. Poor Daddy was dragged from the swift water into which ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... four loads each for them, and when it was all safe on top of the hill, Joe sat down trembling like a leaf. George looked a bit shaky, and Gilbert very hot ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... ordinarily clean-scrubbed floor was covered with sheet iron. A chairman was appointed; and one gentleman was requested to read the obnoxious article. This over, a well-fed, prosperous-looking, fox-hunting iron merchant from Great Charles Street rose, and in very shaky grammar moved, that The Times had disgraced itself and insulted Birmingham, and that it was the duty of every Birmingham man to stop its circulation in the town. This having been seconded, and duly ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... Mother Toulouche. He slipped into the passage; but instead of rejoining the old storekeeper he began to mount a steep and tortuous staircase, which led up to the many floors of the house. He climbed up to the seventh story; turned the key of a shaky door, and entered an attic whose skylight window opened obliquely in ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... converse no more," said Jessop in a shaky voice, and staggered to his feet, rapidly growing sober under the influence of a deadly fear. Hurd did not move as the man crossed the room, but felt if the key was safe in his pocket. The sailor tried to open the door, and then realized that ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... which has filled me with an even greater terror, than did the Pit fear. I will write it down now, and, if anything more happens, endeavor to make a note of it, at once. I have a feeling, that there is more in this last affair, than in all those others. I am shaky and nervous, even now, as I write. Somehow, I think death is not very far away. Not that I fear death—as death is understood. Yet, there is that in the air, which bids me fear—an intangible, cold horror. I felt it last night. ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... the same assurance and confidence as usual, but said "he'd fix 'er." We remained in our room, sitting on the bed without shirts about the usual length of time, when, "the kid" not returning, we began to feel a little shaky. ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... sees her for the first time, solidity is the word which comes naturally to his mind, as expressive of every thing around him, has only the look of what she was in her days of greatness, and on the surface of the earth there is not to-day a more unsteady, shaky, insecure spot, scarcely worthy of being chosen by a nomad Tartar as a place wherein to pitch his tent for the night, and hurry off at the first appearance of the rising sun on the morrow. Can the ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... possess a horse. This horse was a relic of former generations, and showed by his protruding ribs the general leanness of the land. He moved in an eccentric amble, and when put upon his speed was generally run backward. To this old negro's horse was harnessed a very shaky and absurd wagon, which rattled like approaching dissolution, and each part of it ran without any connection or correspondence with any other part. It had no tail-board, and its shafts were sharp as famine; and into this mimicry of a vehicle the murderer was to be sent to the Potomac river, ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... to all the Halloway delegates, you see, and to all the shaky McCune people, and interview all the undecided ones. The McCune crowd may see them afterwards, but they can't fix men in this district against John Harkless. All we've got to do is to pass the word. It's ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... the yard, or court, of the tenements with debris that reached halfway to the roof, so that the old locksmith, if he wished to go out or in, must do so by way of the third-story window, over a perilous path of shaky timbers and sliding brick. He evidently considered it a kind of siege, and shut himself in his attic, bolting and barring the door, and making secret sorties by night for provisions. When the chimney fell down or was blown over, he punched a ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... a short silence, during which the calves looked more bored than usual. But the shaky wheels had made but a few revolutions before the owner of the ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... put out of the way and was not within easy walking distance for a shaky invalid; nevertheless Joyce was determined to try. While he transferred the cushions, she rolled herself in a shawl and made a brave effort to walk across, only ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... he got the ear of some of the higher-ups on the P. C. & W. He even got his scheme into the private office of the president, and from the president word ran down to Gray. I think even Gray began then to get shaky in the knees. I tell you, Conniston, the Old Man's project is so big that until it is consummated there will always be a doubt in other men's minds whether the thing ever can be done. If it can't, if it proves impracticable to irrigate this country, to build first Valley City and then a ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... his camp-stool on the narrow deck, he felt as a man must feel after burning his bridges, a little shaky. He knew the lengths to which a stubborn will may carry a person, and he was not at all sure of her coming. Not that he meant to draw back; he spoke truth in saying he would have died first; he was a good swimmer, and he had no serious doubt of his ability to reach the shore, but he did not ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... should do. By his tone, I could tell that he was feeling something of the strangeness of it all; and the other men, including Wentworth, were so quiet that I was afraid they were beginning to get shaky. ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... charging for the accommodation quite after the style of everything Spanish. The hotel-keepers will require their pay on the basis of Spanish gold, but will cheerfully allow a premium of six per cent. on American gold or American bank-bills. As to the banks in Cuba, all are shaky, so to speak; several have lately failed, and the others might as well do so. It is not long since the president of the Havana Savings Bank placed a pistol at his temple and blew his brains out. Mercantile credit may be said to be dead, and business nearly at a standstill. Commercial ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... as certain of that as you do," the miner answered. "I've seen so many impossible things happen. I'm kind o' shaky. I wish I could have your help." He rose with a shiver of dread. "You're right. I see that. We've got to get out of here, but it won't do ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... of England. The wood is very tough, heavy, and close grained. It is largely used in France for handles for agricultural and mining implements, and of late years has been much used in this country for lasts. The wood of large growth is apt to became shaky, and it is consequently not used as a building wood. It is said to have been used as a substitute for box in engraving, but with what success does ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... his personality at will, and the effort to do so to please the partner is liable to result in a topheavy hypocrisy—a superstructure calculated to impress the observer, but built on a shaky ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... murmured Clare, bracing herself against the chiffonier which she had moved away from the door, "just a little shaky from the drugs—but all right. Don't bother about me, now. I can take care of myself. I'll feel better in a minute. Upstairs— that is where I think that woman is. Please, please don't—I'm all ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... the scales tip themselves; he keeps his accounts in a character that no one but God can read; if you borrow from him, your debt mounts up like a refuse heap or gallops like a horse; if he talks to a customer he "draws a line" and debits the conversation; when his own credit is shaky he writes up his transactions on the wall so that they can easily be rubbed out. He is so stingy that the dogs starve at his feast, and he scolds his wife if she spends a farthing on betel-nut. A Jain Baniya drinks ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... him sullenly up and down, then she led the way into the black chasm and up the stairs. They were so shaky as to make Calton fear they might give way. As they toiled slowly up the broken steps he held tightly to his companion's arm. At last they stopped at a door through the cracks of which a faint glimmer of light was to be seen. Here the girl gave a shrill ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... pursuit of Byers ceased, for Blaine and Brodno, with their two weapons, aided by Erwin, who manipulated a Lee-Enfield rifle, kept the three scouts busy for a time. A plane is a shaky place from which to aim a rifle, but Orris, having had much practice at the training butts, soon laid out one lone pilot and his scout went trailing guideless out ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... he added, "that there were immediate causes for the attack, and quite sufficient ones too. My health has been terribly shaky of late. To which one must add boredom, constantly being hard up . . . the absence of people and general interests . . . . My position is worse ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... woman, how a good fight was maintained in some sly ring between two of equal brawn: and manufacturers were warned of the consequences of their iniquities, Government was lashed for sleeping upon shaky ordinances, colonists were gibbeted for the maltreating of natives: the ring and fervour of the notes on daily events told of Rockney's hand upon the national heart—with a faint, an enforced, reluctant indication of our not being the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... named Rossignol: a boy of twelve. What made it worse was that two elder brothers had been killed in the war, and the parents sat in despair by the bedside of their only remaining child. The father was old and very shaky; the mother much younger, but she had suffered dreadfully from the death of her two boys—you should hear my father tell it! I make a hash of it; when he tells it people cry. Madame Rossignol was the ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... lighted it and puffed out clouds of bluish smoke into the clear air of the hot May morning. Then he looked at the position of the sun and verified the fact that his nickel watch had stopped again. The shaky little house hung like a chance knot in an endless wire in the middle of the glittering double row of rails that stretched from east to west across the flowery prairie. It looked like a ridiculous freak in the ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... government wants, most of all," he told the boys. "They were made by an old engraver who was once in the employ of the government. The man is too old and shaky to make other plates, and as Sack Todd isn't an engraver himself, it's not likely he will attempt to go into ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... man, his voice a tense whisper in the musty cell. "I mean that right now you are practically dead. You may not know it, but you are. You walk into a newly opened planet with your smart little bag of tricks, walk in here with a shaky passport and no permit, with no knowledge of the natives outside of two paragraphs of inaccuracies in the Explorer's Guide, and even then you're not content to come in and sell something legitimate, something the natives might conceivably be able to ...
— Letter of the Law • Alan Edward Nourse
... certainly have put them down as being all the signatures of one person. The variations are very slight. The later signatures are a little stiffer, a little more shaky and indistinct, and the B's and k's are both appreciably different from those in the earlier ones. But there is another fact which emerges when the whole series is seen together, and it is so striking and significant a fact, that I am astonished ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... to say; but 'Read, man,' said the old King, jerking his foot under the bedclothes. So Hugh the Bishop began to read them over, and the sick man listened with a shaky head, for by now ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... respectable enough from outside," says Frau Buchholz, when she went to see a girl who had just married a poor man; "but oh! those steep narrow stairs that I had to mount, those wretched entrances on each floor, the miserable door handles, the sickly bluish-grey walls, the shaky banisters! It was easy to see that the outside had been devised with a view to investors, and the inside for poverty." In houses of this class there are often three courtyards, one behind each other, all noisy and badly kept. The conditions of life in such circumstances ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... side at first as he drank, until, with the moisture, life flowed back into the parched channels of him, so that, soon, still weak and shaky, he was up and braced on all his four wide-spread legs and still eagerly lapping. The boy chuckled and chirped his delight in the spectacle, and Jerry found surcease and easement sufficient to enable him to speak with his tongue after the heart-eloquent manner of dogs. He took his nose out of ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... clasping mine, if she'd even looked at me, I must have burst out that I loved her, past life and death, and out to the world to come. But it was no time to force love-making on a girl who had seen the man she meant to marry lie dead before her eyes. If she turned shaky, or cried, I could never save her. For the bit of lake in front of us was ten times worse than what we'd crossed. I knew that when I tightened up the snowshoes silently and led my dream girl out on it. I would have ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... and the red cedar bungalow of Dr. Hooker Beach. The moment Claire saw the doctor's thin demanding face, she trusted him. He spoke to Mr. Boltwood with assurance: "All you need is some rest, and your digestion is a little shaky. Been eating some pork? Might stay here a day or two. We're glad to have a ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... curious eyes did not take themselves off her face. She leant over Sophy, who was copying a house, told her the lines were slanting, took the pencil from her hand, and tried to correct them, but found herself making them over-black, and shaky. She had not seen such a line since the days of her childhood's ill-temper. She walked to the fireplace and said, 'I am going to call on Mrs. Osborn to-day. Not that your father desires it, but because I have been indulging ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... des Savants de d'Europe', June 1745. The discussion was revived somewhat later, however, and a few Dutch scholars were supposed to be responsible for a new theory founded on history; the foundations proving somewhat shaky, however,—a quality which it shares, we must say, with all the other theories ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... year ago. I stayed there—waiting. Nothing was sure, except that the town grew like a mushroom. It filled with soldiers—and the worst crowd I ever saw. You can bet I was shaky when I finally got an audience with General Lodge and his staff. They had an office in a big storehouse. The place was full of men— soldiers and tramps. It struck me right off what a grim and discouraged bunch those engineers looked. I didn't understand them, but I do now.... ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... and shaky, but I come of stiffish stock, and I wouldn't have backed down then, it seemed to me, if they had been going to boil me alive. I suppose it sounds foolish, and if I had had plenty of time I have ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... for Tom had an idea that he might one day have a company of his own. His father suggested it to him, and Tom lost no time in talking it up among his friends. To his great disgust Tom had learned that some of these friends were getting "shaky." As time wore on and the Rangers began to show proficiency under the severe drilling to which they were daily subjected, these friends began to think and say that they were afraid they had been a little too hasty ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... there was excitement at the Convent; someone was reading a three weeks' old journal to the soldiers and for a moment everybody forgot his particular aches and black heads lifted themselves from their pillows and gaunt forms swayed to and fro on shaky elbows. The lust of battle lit up wooden countenances, fire sprang from eyes yet heavily veiled by crusted lids and a fervent "bien fait" or "vivent les Belges," trembled from heretofore ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... am foolish and I've been foolish all my life, but I'm getting a little sense now. [Kneels in armchair, facing WILL; her voice is shaky with anger and tears.] All my life, since the day you first took me away, you've planned and planned and planned to keep me, and to trick me and bring me down with you. When you came to me I was happy. I didn't have much, just a little salary ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... tea's what he needs first thing," suggested Ed, in a shaky voice, as Shad paused in his ramblings. "Dick, you cut some wood, now, an' I'll be fillin' th' kettle with ice an' get un over. Bob better ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... his hand in Nance's two, feeling very weak and shaky, and looked vaguely back at L'Etat as it faded and dwindled into a dim black triangle ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... Susan; "she never sewed on it none. She never did nothin' 's far 's I c'd make out except to sit on the front porch 'n' talk to his clerk. My, but I sh'd think he 'd hate the sight o' that front porch. If it c'd be got off, I 'd like to buy that of him too. My front porch 's awful old 'n' shaky 'n' I 'll need a good porch to wheel baby on. He c'd take my porch in part payment. It's bein' so old 'n' shaky wouldn't matter to him I don't suppose, for I 'll bet a dollar he 'll never let no other wife o' his sit ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... doubting look at her, for he had been shy of introducing Don Ippolito's name since the day on the Brenta, and he did not know what effect a recurrence to him in this talk might have. "I've often wondered if our own clerical friend were not a little shaky in his faith. I don't think nature meant him for a priest. He always strikes me as an extremely secular-minded person. I doubt if he's ever put the question whether he is what he professes to be, squarely to himself—he's such ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... degrees in the shade on a particularly humid July day, the visitor trudged up one steep, rocky alley and down another, hesitantly negotiated shaky little bridges over several ravines, scrambled out of a ditch, and finally arrived at the address of Mary Colbert. It was the noon hour. A Negro man had tied his mule under an apple tree in one corner ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... the idea, evangelical in itself, that he who is immaculate has the right to be indulgent, and the dread of misleading, if by chance all the doctrines emitted by the professors of philosophy were wrong, made my system of morality appear rather shaky. It is, in reality, as solid as the rock. These little liberties which I allow myself are by way of a recompense for my strict adherence to the general code. So in politics I indulge in reactionary remarks so that I may not have the appearance of a Liberal understrapper. I don't ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... be convincing. It should appear to radiate impossibly, or to destroy energy without radiation. But it must actually produce a broadcast signal of this exotic type—here the sergeant described with shaky precision the exact constants of the wave to be generated—and the broadcaster from nowhere must not be able to deduce those constants or that wave-type from the diagram until he had built the ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... inferior to that of town scholars. It is very shaky and irregular. Also, I notice that the children seem stupid and dull. I don't like putting it so plainly, but, in fact, ah, they seem to be possessed with the proverbial stupidity of country people. How ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... womanly. frail, fragile, shattery^; flimsy, unsubstantial, insubstantial, gimcrack, gingerbread; rickety, creaky, creaking, cranky; craichy^; drooping, tottering &c v.. broken, lame, withered, shattered, shaken, crazy, shaky; palsied &c 158; decrepit. languid, poor, infirm; faint, faintish^; sickly &c (disease) 655; dull, slack, evanid^, spent, short-winded, effete; weather-beaten; decayed, rotten, worn, seedy, languishing, wasted, washy, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... have great memories, and once they learn to spell a word, they never seem to forget it. They learn to spell in school. What they don't learn is how to put the words together the way we do. Cousin George is also shaky on capitals, you notice. Now to-morrow we can go ahead with that big cattle-stuff. I can take my time about making Annie's scenes; I was afraid I might have to rush them all through first thing, so as to send her back. I'm sure glad she can stay; she's good to have around, ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... the writing-room, and taking off her gloves she wrote a letter. Her pretty fingers were innocent of rings, and her handwriting was a little shaky. Nevertheless, it is certain that not a man passed through the room who did not find an excuse to steal a second glance at her. This is what ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... more than that it was to be private. It was pitiful to see that man, so fierce and bold as they say he once was, trembling as if doing something by stealth, and the great hard knotty hands so crumpled and shaky, that he had to leave all to me. And that they should fancy I could go and hurt him!' said Leonard, stretching his broad chest and ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge |
