"Squat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... company with an American, who had gone into the shop with me. This American is a sort of transatlantic Bunsby. He talks little, but thinks much. His sole observation to me as we walked away was this, "They will squat, sir, mark my words, they will squat." I received this oracular utterance with respect, and I leave it to others to solve its meaning, I am myself a person of singular credulity, but even I sometimes ask myself whether all I hear and read can be true. Was there ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... of Casuarinas is a magnificent specimen of a wide-spreading shrub, in form a squat dome, which commemorates the name of a French naturalist—TOURNEFORTIA ARGENTA. The leaves, crowded at the ends of thick branchlets, are covered with soft, silky hairs of a silvery cast, which reflect the sun's rays. It would ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... of Romanesque feeling, but the church having been much pulled about in the thirteenth century, it came to have a semi-Byzantine choir and two depressed domes, quite Byzantine, over the nave. The facade, with its squat towers, exhibits no lofty aim, but when one looks at the tabernacle-work in the tympan of the divided portal, the capitals in the jambs and the mouldings of the archivolts, the elegant arcade above and the tracery of ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... human, I guessed; to judge by the small squat head, and still more by a thing like a tail or extra limb turned up behind and pointing, like a loathsome large finger, at some symbol graven in the centre of the vast stone back. I had begun, in the dim light, ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... told him he could get four hundred pounds for it by going back to Pniel. "But," said he, "my face is turned so; and when Squat turn his face so, he going home. Not can bear go the other way then," and he held out his hand ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... painted ceiling. The intricate perforations of the lamp were inset with colored glass, and the result was a subdued and warm illumination. Odd-looking oriental vessels, long-necked jars, jugs with tenuous spouts and squat bowls possessing engraved and figured covers emerged from the shadows of niches. A low divan with gaily colored mattresses extended from the door around one corner of the room where it terminated beside ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... the midst lay but the Tower itself? The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart, Built of brown stone, without a counterpart In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf 185 He strikes on, only when ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... tide to get a boat off sharp, and a long shelving run of sandy shingle before we reach the sea; for all the boats are on the upper strand of the beach, above the last high-water mark, and the flow of the tide is scarcely an hour old. There is a short squat cobble, flat-bottomed and of intolerable weight, down near the waters, and its owner makes for it. Another man drives him out seawards, against the constant lift of breaking waves, large enough to be troublesome, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... Margate by-and-by. And oh! my boy cousins and my two greatest chums at school are staying with me now at The Hollies. The girls' names are Amelia and Rebecca Perkins. Oh, they're fine! Do give me room to squat between you girls. You are ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... This common, squat Virgin, fat and pudgy, was simply a good German girl, well-dressed and squarely seated, but she could never have been the ecstatic Mother of God! Then these kneeling and standing men were not in prayer; there was no devotion in this picture; the personages ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... myself, started at seven. We had four superb mules, and two good pack-horses, a large tent, and a plentiful supply of camping blankets. I put on all my own warm clothes, as well as most of those which had been lent to me, which gave me the squat, padded, look of a puffin or Esquimaux, but all, and more were needed long before we reached the top. The mules were beyond all praise. They went up the most severe ascent I have ever seen, climbing steadily for nine hours, without a touch of the spur, and after twenty-four ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... haven't any title to this land you've elected to occupy, although I created it. You see, I'm sort of lord of creation around here. My people call me 'The Laird of Tyee,' and nobody but a stranger would have had the courage to squat on the Sawdust Pile without consulting me. What's your idea about ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... our Mongol neighbors began to pay their formal calls. A picturesque fellow, blazing with color, would dash up to our tent at a full gallop, slide off and hobble his pony almost in a single motion. With a "sai bina" of greeting he would squat in the door, produce his bottle of snuff and offer us a pinch. There was a quiet dignity about these plains dwellers which was wonderfully appealing. They were seldom unduly curious, and when we indicated that the visit was at an end, they left ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... castle is flanked by two squat towers. They are circular and battlemented, and between them upon a parapet, which is higher than the towers themselves, appears the motto of the Cliffords, 'Desormais' (hereafter), in open stone letters. ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... and whisper to one another when they play upon its summit that a great giant in golden armour lies buried in a stone vault underneath. But if only they knew the real truth, they would say instead that that big, ungainly, overgrown grave covers the remains of a short, squat, dwarfish chieftain, akin in shape and feature to the Lapps and Finns, and about as much unlike a giant as human nature could easily manage. It maybe regarded as a general truth of history that the greatest men don't by any means always get the ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... was, a town of pretence, if such a word can be applied to anything Spanish, where things either are or are not, and there's an end. It was as drab as the landscape, as weatherworn and austere; but it had a squat officer sitting at the receipt of custom, which Sahagun had not, and a file of anxious peasants before him, bargaining for their ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... now the natives. The squat and squalid huts, stuck down upon the earth without any pretence of raised foundation, and jumbled together, corner to side, back to front, any way, as if some wind had blown them there, did not improve on acquaintance. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... not have noticed this squat vulgarism, had not the pen blazoned its own depravity by lifting it out of newspapers into bound volumes. The speech and page of every one, who would not be italicized for lingual looseness, should be forever closed against a phrase so shocking to taste, a phrase, we are sorry to say, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... east wing of the squat adobe house. About midnight there was a vigorous and persistent shaking ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... shipping, especially the export of coal and iron. Until the opening of the Forth bridge, its commodious harbour was the northern station of the ferry across the firth from Granton, 5 m. south. The parish church, dating from 1594, is a plain structure, with a squat tower rising in two tiers from the centre of the roof. The public buildings include two hospitals, a town-hall, music hall, library and reading room and science institute. On the rocks forming the western end of the harbour stands Rossend Castle, where the amorous French poet Chastelard ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... briskly at first, swinging his stick and watching his shadow, a squat, incredibly agitated silhouette in the golden dust. But gradually and insensibly the peaceful influences of that still and lovely hour tempered his heart's impatience; and he found himself walking at a pace more leisurely. After all, there was no hurry; he was unwearied, ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... and far away to the eastward rose the first straggling cabins of the town. Creeping toward them down the road rolled a dark squat figure. It grew and spread slowly on the horizon until it became a fat old black woman, hooded and aproned, with great round hips and massive bosom. Her face was heavy and homely until she looked up and lifted the drooping cheeks, and then ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... whispers from the wind, 'Mid glories of the hollowed night, To storm-swept vales and mounts we haste, And, in monastic halls we see, Above a greenish gyrus rind, The flick'ring flames of a light, Beneath whose subtle, shadowed waste Squat men and women that would flee The ghastly words from Vellum told, Who pluck their eyes and pull their hair,— Beneath their feet there writhes a worm! As bludgeons smite a leering soul. And when a wench that Satan sold To some old seer, whose head is bare, And oily snakes in cauldrons ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... so abruptly to the wholesome nip of the outside air, were giving me a faintness which this moral check lessened my power to combat. Von Brning's face wore a sneering smile that I winced under; and, turning, I found another pair of eyes fixed on me, those of Herr Bhme, whose squat figure had appeared at a pair of folding doors leading to an adjoining room. Napkin in hand, he was taking in the scene before him with fat benevolence, but exceeding shrewdness. I instantly noticed a faint red weal relieving the ivory of his bald head; and I had suffered too often in the ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... in a garden three Moors sat at tea. A carpet was spread, and I caught a glimpse of the copper kettle, the squat charcoal brazier tended by a slave, the quaint little coffer filled no doubt with fine green tea, the porcelain dish of cakes. It was a quite pleasing picture, at which, had courtesy permitted, I would have enjoyed more than a ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... day on the Mississip, And her day come at last— The Movastar was a better boat, But the Belle she wouldn't be passed. And so come tearin' along that night— The oldest craft on the line, With a nigger squat on her safety valve, And her furnace ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... the whole of the valley, including the park, with its tall trees marking the horizon; and, beyond, a depression in a wood surmounting a hill, at a distance of some seven or eight hundred yards, stood another tower, squat and in ruins, covered with ivy ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... us as long as we want to be hid. Come, don't squat here, or we'll let the rascals slip, ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... was sitting on the side of the stretcher, and Jim Thorpe, his foreman, stood leaning against the table. McLagan's Irish face, his squat figure and powerful head were a combination suggesting tremendous energy and determination, rather than any great mental power, and in this he strongly contrasted with the refined, thoughtful ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... peregrination along the main street. There along the wall squat dozens of coolies, with their carrying arrangement, sitting on their heels, and basking in the sun. Further on, one of them is just loading a huge earthenware vase full of the native beverage. The weight must be something enormous. Yet see how quickly ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... "Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, Assaying by his devilish art to reach The organs of her fancy, and with them forge Illusions as he list, ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... He sends word of it to Sir Louis by an orderly who can be trusted to talk to any one he meets on the way. I leave by the back way at ten forty-five. However, here's a chance for you to practise deaf-and-dumb drill. There's some one coming. Squat down in that corner. Look meek and miserable. That's the stuff. Answer the ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... the fat brewer happened for once not to be resting his tired body in sleep after the fatigues of the day, he would squat down near Listing, who had been a wanderer and a vagabond. He would listen with many a shake of the head to the stories Listing related of his life on the roads, especially of the nights the fine ones, in which one lay on the dry grass beneath the twinkling ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... logs and canvas sprawled between the stream and a curving mountain-side. The day was still and clear, hence vertical pencil-markings of blue smoke hung over the roofs; against the white background squat dwellings stood out distinctly, like diminutive dolls' houses. Upon closer approach the river shore was seen to be lined with scows and rowboats; a stern- wheeled river steamer lay moored abreast of the town. Above it a valley broke through from the north, out of which poured ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... 540 feet on each side. In the centre of this, on a raised platform, stands the tomb itself, a square measuring 69 feet on each side. It is two stories in height, and at each angle is an octagonal tower, surmounted by an open pavilion. The towers, however, are rather squat in proportion, and the general design of the building very far from being so pleasing as that of many less pretentious tombs in the neighbourhood. Had it, indeed, been built in red sandstone, or even with an inlay of white marble like that ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... yet given any sign of having retrieved the use of his senses. And here Mr. Fillet could not help contemplating, with surprise, the strange figure and accoutrements of his patient, who seemed in age to be turned of fifty. His stature was below the middle size; he was thick, squat, and brawny, with a small protuberance on one shoulder, and a prominent belly, which, in consequence of the water he had swallowed, now strutted beyond its usual dimensions. His forehead was remarkably convex, and so very low, that his black bushy hair descended ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... physique was singing in a shrill, nasal voice a pathetic ballad. She sang without expression, bringing her hands with monotonous gestures alternately to her breast. Her squat, matronly figure, beef from the heels up, looked singularly absurd in her short skirt. Her face was excessively over-painted, her mouth good-naturedly large, and her eyes out of their slit-like lids ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... length, and so appreciably curved that the owner was evidently in a condition of transition from the semi-quadrupedal crouch of the ape to the erect attitude of man. The Ape-Man, in other words, was a heavy, squat, powerful, bestial-looking animal; of small stature, but above the pygmy standard; erect in posture, but with clear traces of the proneness of his ancestor; far removed from the highest ape in brainpower, but almost equally far removed from ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... is populous, chiefly with shoeless inhabitants, monotonously flat, few buildings for dread of earthquake being over one story, even the national palace and cathedral sitting low and squat. An elevation of five thousand feet gives it a pleasant June weather, but life moves with a drowsy, self-contented air. Its people are far more obliging than the average of Mexico and have little or none of the latter's sulkiness or half-insolence. ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... begin. A thousand thickets, thro each opening glen, Pour forth their hunters to the chase of men; Trunks of huge trees, and rocks and ravines lend Unnumber'd batteries and their files defend; They fire, they squat, they rise, advance and fly, And yells and groans alternate rend the sky. The well aim'd hatchet cleaves the helmless head, Mute showers of arrows and loud storms of lead Rain thick from hands unseen, and sudden fling A deep confusion thro ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... rather more than a yard apart, and those yielding black grapes are trained, as a rule, up tall stakes, although some few are trained espalier fashion. Women dexterously detach the bunches with pruning-knives and throw them into the seilles—small squat buckets with wooden handles—the contents of which are emptied from time to time into baskets—the counterpart of the chiffonnier's hotte, and coated with pitch inside so as to close all the crevices of ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... the pole, except that he measured a shovel's length from it before beginning, nor was it his purpose to dig deep. Some dozen or so of expert strokes sufficed. Then, he stopped, looked down into the cavity, bent over it, and took out what appeared to be an ordinary case-bottle: one of those squat, high-shouldered, short-necked glass bottles which the Dutchman is said to keep his Courage in. As soon as he had done this, he turned off his lantern, and they could hear that he was filling up the hole in the dark. The ashes being easily moved by a skilful hand, the spies took this as a hint ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... programme consisted in a little darkey coming in front of our cell with a rudely constructed barber's chair. The cell door opened, and an officer said to me, as if he would hit me with a club the next moment, "Git out of there." I went out. Pointing to the barber's chair, he said, "Squat yourself in that chair." I sat down. "Throw back your head." I laid it back. It was not long before my raven mustache was off, and my hair cut rather uncomfortably short for fly time. After this tonsorial artist had finished his work then came the ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... fir woods they gave the country a singularly sombre aspect. There was little variation in the scenery all the way to Upsala. In some places, the soil appeared to be rich and under good cultivation; here the red villages were more frequent, and squat church-towers showed themselves in the distance. In other places, we had but the rough hills, or rather knobs of gray gneiss, whose masses were covered with yellow moss, and the straggling fir forests. We met but few country teams on the road; nobody was to be seen about ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... days, and the "dandies" whom he and his fellow caricaturists satirized and ridiculed were the sham "Corinthians" of his time. Apart from the idea of caricature they must have been queer fellows—these men with the large eye-glasses, squat broad-brimmed hats, huge cravats and collars, cauliflower frills, tight coats, short bell-shaped trousers, and well-spurred Wellington boots! In one of the satires of the time (which I take to be Robert's) we see five of them preparing for conquest in a hairdresser's shop; ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... chamber about seven feet deep and four feet square lay open to us. At one side of this was a squat, brass-bound wooden box, the lid of which was hinged upwards, with this curious old-fashioned key projecting from the lock. It was furred outside by a thick layer of dust, and damp and worms had eaten through the wood, so that a crop of livid fungi was growing on the ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... many chickens together, an' the ground sickens like, an' you get a squat, an' your chickens die. 'Same way, you crowd Pharisees all in one place—they don't die, but Flesh an' Blood walkin' among 'em is apt to sick up an' pine off. They don't mean it, an' Flesh an' Blood don't know it, but that's the truth—as I've ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... in our noses, and put a ring in it—do you see my ring? How do you think I like a hole made in my nose, as if two holes were not enough! Then they tie a rope to the ring, and lead us about all day long just where they please, without a with your leave, or by your leave! And they make us squat down in the mud, and put a great load on our backs, enough to crush a whipper-snapper like you. Groan as we may, it's all of no use, they do what they choose. Man! the very name makes me shiver. Get out, and ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... with whole birds spitted in the centres; and there was an offensive array of blue and green and yellow glasses on the shore, through which you were expected to look at the Falls gratis. They missed the simple dignity of the blanching Indian maids, who used to squat about on the grass, with their laps full of moccasins and pin-cushions. But, as of old, the photographer came out of his saloon, and invited them to pose for a family group; representing that the light and the spray were singularly propitious, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... smother. Smothe, vapor. Snaw, snow. Snell, bitter. Snooded, bound up with a fillet. Snool, cringe. Solan, gannet. Soote, sweet. Souter, cobbler. Spak, spoke. Spean, wean. Speel, climb. Spier, ask, inquire. Spraing, stripe. Sprattle, scramble. Spreckled, speckled. Spryte, spirit. Squattle, squat. Stacher, stagger, totter. Stane, stone. Steer, stir. Steyned, stained. Stibble, stubble. Still, ever. Stirk, young steer. Stole, robe. Stonen, stony. Stote, stout. Stoure, dust, struggle. Stown, stolen. Strang, strong. Strath, river-valley. Strathspeys, dances for two persons. Straughte, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... devoid of everything save a couple of mattresses, a rickety wooden table, a chair or two, and a heap of Passover cakes, as the unloveliness of the three women who stood there, awkward and flushing before their important visitor. The wife-and-mother was dwarfed and black-wigged, the daughters were squat, with tallow-coloured round faces, vaguely suggestive of Caucasian peasants, while the sightless eye of the elder lent ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... portal. Despite the fact that the bride was considered the ugliest girl in the place, she had been duly "robbed" by her bold or possibly blind lover—her features were providentially veiled beneath her nuptial flammeum, and of her squat figure little could be discerned under the gorgeous accoutrements of the occasion. She was ablaze with ornaments and embroidery of gold, on neck and shoulders and wrist; a wide lace collar fell over a bodice of purple ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... she pleased. Every half-hour or so she would squat on the floor, pull out an intensely black clay pipe, and indulge in a smoke. I love smoking, but I never failed to put as much distance as possible between myself and the rank black fumes which poured with so much ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... they're written on. Haven't squatters dispossessed the Spaniards all over California? Didn't they take the San Antonio ranch in Oakland, defend it with cannon, and put old Peralta in jail for bothering them with his claims of ownership?" He laughed. "It's a rare joke, this land business. If we squat on the Rincon, who'll dispossess us? ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... squat Chinese god in the glass case. It was clear that he hadn't stirred for ages. A difficult thought partly formed in her mind—the Chinese was the god of this room, of Markue's party, of the women seated in the dim light on the ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... King M'tesa, Mackay always saw many boys who used to drive away the flies from the King's face with fans, carry stools for the chiefs and visitors to squat upon, run messages and make themselves generally useful. Most of these boys were the sons of chiefs. When they were not occupied with some errand, they would lounge about playing games with one another in the open space just by the ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... rises, Bill Carmody is discovered fitting in a rocker by the stove, reading a newspaper and smoking a blackened clay pipe. He is a man of fifty, heavy-set and round-shouldered, with long muscular arms and swollen-veined, hairy hands. His face is bony and ponderous; his nose short and squat; his mouth large, thick-lipped and harsh; his complexion mottled—red, purple-streaked, and freckled; his hair, short and stubby with a bald spot on the crown. The expression of his small, blue eyes is one of selfish cunning. ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... Come and squat by the fire. I'm tired of the table, and prefer the floor for a change. Please don't expect anything extra blood-curdling, for you won't get it, unless you'd like me to romance a little. Where do you want me to begin? All my adventures in all the places I've lived ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... I could squat here for a week, provided of course that there was always plenty of provisions to keep us alive," came the ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... head of the stepfather who did so cruelly stare at the poor young David Copperfield, and became a man with only one eye which still held the malevolence that was hurled at that small David. And with this squat, crooked, evil image of the General Robert Carruthers in my heart I alighted from the train into the City of Hayesville, which is the capital of the great American State of Harpeth. The black man had swung himself off ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... worse. It is a mere struggle for daily bread. I wondered whether in the spring-time the young men loved the maidens, or if they only coupled like the beasts. I saw one pair who seemed quite newly wed; for their scanty furniture was new and they were young. The man, short and squat, sat scowling, cross-legged on a chair, a cigarette between his lips. The woman was taller and not ill-made, a slattern; her hair fell dishevelled on her back and over her forehead; her dress was open, displaying the ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... odd-looking structure, her Ladyship was so overcome with excitement that she could hardly stand. Ridgeway caught her as she staggered from her improvised litter. Presently she grew stronger, and with her companion entered what was apparently a palace among the squat, ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... stay in our valley, but drifted back to the West, to that nation we had come from, or went north to the wars with the white man, or became lonely hunters in the hills. Then from the south along the mountain crests came another people, a squat and murderous people, who watched us from the ridges and ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... fire is laid On bark and slabs that rot, and breed Squat ugly things of deadly shade, The scorpion, and the spiteful seed ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... battle for more than an hour, in full view of many thousands of ardent Southerners ashore. The scene, at its height, was appalling. The smoke, belching black from the funnels and white from the guns, made a suffocating pall overhead; while the dark, squat, hideous ironclad hulls seemed to have risen from a submarine inferno to stab each other with livid tongues of flame—so deadly close the two flotillas fought. When the awful hour was over the Confederates were not only defeated but destroyed; and a wail went up from the thousands ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... was directly below us. I lost sight of the vial almost instantly, but the indicating cross-hairs showed me exactly where the vial would strike; at a point approximately half way between the edge of the city and the great squat pile of the administrating building, with its gleaming glass penthouse—the laboratory in which, only a few minutes before, I had witnessed the demonstration of the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... proceeds to use his vocal powers by commanding all others to put theirs to rest. He then arranges his men on each side of the rope, like artillerists at the drag rope. Every man is commanded to grasp the rope firmly with both hands, straighten it, and squat down, inclined a little forward. The leader then passes from rear to front, and from front to rear, reviewing the line to see that every man grasps the rope. All is now still as the grave for a moment, when the commander, or marshal of the day, roars ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... head in response to my voice, and I soon tired of the attempt. The night told me little of who they might be, although they were both in the uniform of the Queen's Rangers, the one called Peter on my right a round, squat figure, and bald-headed, his bare scalp shining oddly when once he removed his cocked hat; the other was an older man, with gray chin beard, and glittering ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... can't you see!' 'But I'm all behind as 'tis'—he shouts to me—'You knows your gospel, don't you: time and tide wait for no man?' 'Ah, but dammit all, they always call for a feller'—I says. With that he turned round and we drove back for the girl. She clumb in and sat on my knees; I squat on a tub of vinegar, there was nowhere else and I was right and all, she was going on for a birth. Well, the old van rattled away for six or seven miles; whenever it stopped you could hear the rain ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... sea-serpent-like creatures rise slowly from below, to begin feeding on the fish—one of those great scientific wonders that you and your father are trying to discover and capture; for that's it, I suppose, though you do keep so squat ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... and spires and towers that surmount the various buildings that make up the far-famed Christian College. Driving along the Marina he sees the Senate House of the Madras University surmounted by its four squat towers; farther on he sees the staid Engineering College, and the still staider Presidency College, and, beyond, the whitewashed buildings of Queen Mary's residential College for Women; and on his way back by the Mount Road he sees the Muhammedan College, with its little ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... a "doctor," took me under her patronage. I would lie near a small fire towards the back of the hut, the two Bapedi crouching behind me. The old woman, with a sheaf of dry reeds in her withered hand, would squat on the floor near my head. Then the hut would fill up with men and women, who would arrange themselves in a crescent shaped mass, with the front rank lying down, the next crouching, those farthest from ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... indicated by the stoker, filled it with dry grass, rotten sticks, coals out of the engine bunker, and lumps of oily cotton waste. Then he struck and applied a match, saw the flame leap and roar amongst the combustibles, filled the stoker's squat tea-kettle with water from the green barrel, put in a generous handful of Tarawakee tea, and, innocent of refinements in tea-making, set ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... forward, and came out on a little clearing. Immediately in front of us stood the masonry of which we had caught glimpses; a low, squat, square tower, some forty feet in height, ruinous as to the most part, but having the side facing us nearly perfect and still boasting a fine old doorway which I set down as of Norman architecture. North ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... ever seed, an' it remembered me o' bit o' Scripter my ole mother hed often read from a book called the Bible, or some sich name—about a lion that wur so tame he used to squat down beside a lamb, 'ithout layin' a claw upon the ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... return to nature is practically a return to barbarism. You would have all men content so long as they grew enough potatoes for their daily needs. You would have England return to the conditions of the Saxon heptarchy. Each man would squat upon his clearing in the forest, ignobly independent, brutally content. There would be no longer that struggle for life which develops capacity, that urging onward of the flood of life which cuts for itself new channels, that passion for betterment which means progress. You save yourself from ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... against the mat of the night. McCord closed his mouth and opened it again for two words: "By gracious!" The following instant he had the lantern and was after her. I watched him go up above my head—a ponderous, swaying climber into the sky—come to the cross-trees, and squat there with his knees clamped around the mast. The clear star of the lantern shot this way and that for a moment, then it disappeared, and in its place there sprang out a bag of yellow light, like a fire-balloon at anchor in the heavens. I could ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... in secret. The devil has no need to blockade or besiege the gate of our ear if he has any of his good things to offer us. The gate that can only be opened from within will open at once of itself if he or any of his newsmongers but squat down for a moment before it. Shame on us, and on all of ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... fourteen Provinces in the Mission field, and attractive is the scene that lies before us. We sail on the "Harmony" to Labrador, and see the neatly built settlements, the fur-clad Missionary in his dog-drawn sledge, the hardy Eskimos, the squat little children at the village schools, the fathers and mothers at worship in the pointed church, the patients waiting their turn in the surgery in the hospital at Okak. We pass on to Alaska, and steam with the Brethren up the Kuskokwim River. ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... the goose-herd to the man with the crates. It reads: "Hasten thy feet because of the geese! Hearken! thou knowest not the next minute what has been said to thee!" Above, a reis with a stick bids other peasants squat on the ground before addressing the scribe, and he is saying to them: "Sit ye down to talk." The third scene is in another style; on it may be seen Semites bringing offerings of vases of gold, silver, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... a squat figure, her head tied up in a dirty towel, her dress ragged and dirty, and much too small for her abundant figure. She welcomed us telling us the "po chile was bad sick" but she would talk to us. As the door of the lean-to kitchen was open, it offered a breath of outside air, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... here," he told me; "you must not mind. The sentry has orders to keep everybody away from the palace, as people come in the afternoon and squat under my windows to jabber, and I cannot sleep. Those orders, I assure you, were not meant for you. You will be my guest all the time you are in the city, and I can accept ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... the very day of the surrender, that I set out with my captives for the Eternal City. Caterina was conveyed in her litter with her elder daughter, but the younger insisted on riding on horseback at my side. She was an ugly little hoyden of five years, this Giovanna, who, squat of stature and swarthy as a gypsy, bestrode her little pony like a man; but, though by nature stubborn and subject to fits of anger in which she bit and scratched like a wildcat, to me she had taken a fancy as intense as it ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... state of agitation. She beckoned him into the house and hoarsely whispered: "Dar's a dirty Injun in de shed. I wouldn' 'low him ter set foot in dis yar house, I wouldn', not ef he'd scalped me on de spot. He grunt, an' squat, an' 'lowed he done wouldn' stir less ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... to the foregoing prayer, is to squat down upon the ground, placing the palm of their hands flat thereon twice, touching the earth the same number of times with their foreheads; then rubbing their arms from the wrist to the elbow, with that which is contracted by this operation, when the hands are applied to the face, and the ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... shadow line,—for it was not winter, but a brilliant summer morning, the grass all dusted with powdered diamonds, the sky a turquoise, the air a joy,—under this archway, I say, sat a big St. Bernard dog, squat on his haunches, his head well up, like a grenadier on guard. His eyes commanded the approaches down the road, up the road, and across the street; taking in the passing peddler with the tinware, and the girl with a basket strapped to her back, her fingers knitting for ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... some of our nearer neighbours were seen cautiously poking their heads from out their holes and looking cunningly, and at the same time inquisitively, about them. After some time, a dog would emerge from the entrance of his domicile, squat upon his looking-out place, shake his ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... laborers was engaged in moving the timbers back from the railroad siding. Superintending the work was a squat little man—Bannon could not see until near by that he was not a boy—big-headed, big-handed, big-footed. He stood there in his shirt-sleeves, his back to Bannon, swearing good-humoredly at the men. When ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... shuddered; but man being in the most critical moments liable to strange associations of idea, which play like meteors across the anguish of his spirit, it chanced that the broad back of the landlord suddenly reminded him of the back of a squat schoolfellow of his at Ostrau, a good-natured baker's son, upon whom, in many a scuffle, he had often practiced the boyish trick of tripping an adversary from behind. Quick as lightning he sprang upon the ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... in our power to support them; our Government can't help to float a bad loan, but I am sure we have done the French no harm at Washington. It will be good policy on the part of Maximilian to encourage Confederate soldiers, provided they don't come and squat in too great numbers. I understand that the French army is not to be withdrawn until it is no longer wanted by Maximilian, but that will not be till the day of ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... the information to hand, he had formed in his mind an odd kind of anthropomorphic image of the germ. He pictured it as a squat, thick-set man of repellent aspect and stealthy movements, who sneaked up on you when you were not looking and did unpleasant things to you, selecting as the time for his attacks those nights when you had allowed ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... A squat tub of a boat, her stern piled high with wicker crab-pots, came round the northern headland and entered the little bay. The elderly fisherman who was rowing rested on his oars and sat contemplating the crab-pots in the stem. A younger man, clad in a jersey and sea boots, was busy ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... Eden's days return there is no deliverance for the lower animals. Vegetarians may reduce their theories to practice in the cities and among cultivated fields, but vegetarians among the red men of the Far West or the squat men of the Arctic zone, would either have to violate their ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... kinds of crawling things among the tottering walls, and peeping out of their rents and crannies. A monkey sitting squat, developing into a demon, reverses ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... the grass; and averted her head. She did not squat like the other red people; but reclined, supporting herself on one hand, much as Natalie ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... which entrance upon it in the dusk of the evening brings. There lay the great white Yukon in the middle distance; beyond it the Yukon Flats, snow-covered, desolate, stretched away enormously, hedged here at their beginning by grey, dim hills. Spread out in the foreground were the little, squat, huddling cabins that belonged to no one, with never a light in a window or smoke from a chimney, the untrodden snow drifted against door and porch. It would be hard to imagine a drearier prospect, and one had the feeling ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... morning mists had uncovered a coast-line broken with bays and inlets. Above it towered green hills, the peak of each topped by a squat block-house; in the valleys and water courses like columns of marble ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... the males that the voice is well developed. But if we look forward, past Amphibians altogether, we find the voice becoming a maternal call helping to secure the safety of the young—a use very obvious when young birds squat motionless at the sound of the parent's danger-note. Later on, probably, the voice became an infantile call, as when the unhatched crocodile pipes from within the deeply buried egg, signalling to the mother that it is time to ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... rider on it, of course!" exclaimed the other lad, as he raised the glasses to his eyes, training them on the further end of the squat elevation that stood up in the midst of the sage level like a great hump ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... Basra, the House of Sinbad in Ashar Creek has quite the effect of a wonderfully staged production. The huge, high-prowed mahailas, the crazy wooden galleries skirting the river, the quaint, squat minaret appearing over the flat roofs, and the dim light of lamps reflected in the still water made a picture at twilight that it would be difficult to beat for mystery and romance. A man in black with a fire of brushwood in the bow of a mahaila added ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... A black squat beetle, vigorous for his size, Pushing tail-first by every road that's wrong The dung-ball of his dirty thoughts along His tiny sphere of grovelling sympathies— Has knocked himself full-butt, with blundering ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... extremely short the Jap's legs were made itself plain in the fact that stirrups could not be fixed so he could reach them with his feet. When he used any support at all he stuck his feet through the straps above the stirrups. How funny his squat, broad figure looked in a saddle! Evidently he was not accustomed to horses. When I saw the mustang roll the white of his eyes and glance back at Takahashi then I knew something ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... put up in squat-shaped flasks of tinned copper, called kunkumas, holding from 1 to 10 lb., and sewn up in white woolen cloths. Usually their contents are transferred at Constantinople into small gilded bottles of German manufacture for export. ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... all squat down in this patch of grass," suggested Madaline, who, as yet, had not even glimpsed the envelope Grace had passed on to Cleo. "Do let's read it!" she ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... Square. On of them was just bringing a long monologue to a close. The other, who walked on the verge of the path and was at times obliged to step on to the road, owing to his companion's rudeness, wore an amused listening face. He was squat and ruddy. A yachting cap was shoved far back from his forehead and the narrative to which he listened made constant waves of expression break forth over his face from the corners of his nose and eyes and mouth. Little jets of wheezing laughter followed one another out of his convulsed ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... feel able to buy one of these machines, we would say that we have made arrangements for the approaching season, so that those who wish may bring their dough to our mammoth squatter and get it treated at our place at the nominal price of two bits per squat. Strangers calling for their squat or unsquat dough, will ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... said Langrish, leading the way to the bank facing that in the occupation of the enemy, "here's our place. Squat down and make ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... he was here, and it's a pity he threw up and left. Somebody's jumped his claims by this time, sure. Fact is, you can't leave a claim over night, without having somebody jump into it and squat. People are getting crazy, running 'round wild-like and grabbing any land they fancy. The Government will have to step in and ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... weird sisters in Macbeth upon the pilot's thumb, with curiosity as eager and scarcely less malignant. Mrs. Heukbane was a tall womanshe held the precious epistle up between her eyes and the window. Mrs. Shortcake, a little squat personage, strained and stood on tiptoe to have ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... a squat and unlovely erection, under a tar-pitched roof of slate. Its stone walls were coated with a stucco composition, which included tallow as an ingredient and ensured remarkable warmth and dryness. Before its face there ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... beyond the town. And though it was growing late I consented; for there was one long white road under an archway and round a hill that dragged me like a long white cord. We drove through the strong, squat gateway that was made by Romans, and I remember the coincidence like a sort of omen that as we passed out of the city I heard simultaneously the three sounds which are the trinity of France. They make what some poet calls "a tangled trinity," and I am not going to disentangle it. Whatever ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... ended, he took hold of Chia Jui, and, extinguishing again the lantern, he brought him out into the court, feeling his way up to the bottom of the steps of the large terrace. "It's safe enough in this nest," he observed, "but just squat down quietly and don't utter a sound; wait until I come back before ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... short and squat, elderly, burned by forty years of tropic sun, and with the most beautiful liquid brown eyes I ever saw in a man, spoke from a vast experience. The crisscross of scars on his bald pate bespoke a tomahawk intimacy with the black, and of equal intimacy was the advertisement, front and ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... threw his cigarette away, flexed his hands in his gloves, and set his monocle more firmly in his eye, stepping forward as the footsteps on the stairway behind him ceased and the other officers emerged from the squat flint keep—Captain Cazabielle, the post CO; big, chocolate-brown Brigadier-General Themistocles M'zangwe; little Colonel Hideyoshi O'Leary. Far in front of him, to the left, the horizon was lost in the cloudbank over Takkad Sea; directly in front, and to the right, the brown ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... tortoise and hare— The one at the goal while the other is—where?" Why, back there in Dreamland, renewing his lease Of life, all his muscles preserving the peace, The goal and the rival forgotten alike, And the long fatigue of the needless hike. His spirit a-squat in the grass and the dew Of the dogless Land beyond the Stew, He sleeps, like a saint in a holy place, A winner of all that is good ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... thinking of Milton's striking description of Satan "squat like a toad" by the ear of the sleeping Eve ('Paradise Lost', IV, 800). In this passage "Eve" refers to Queen Caroline with whom Hervey was on intimate terms. It is said that he used to have a seat in the queen's hunting chaise "where he sat close ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... me, attached to the chain by his wrist, was a squat, heavily-built, powerfully-muscled man. He was somewhere between thirty-five and forty years of age. I sized him up. In the corners of his eyes I saw humor and laughter and kindliness. As for the rest of him, he was a brute-beast, wholly unmoral, and with all ...
— The Road • Jack London
... me, and she doffed hat and joseph. She set me comfortably before the fire in an elbow-chair, and handed me a new pipe and a fresh paper of tobacco, and insisted on my smoking. Then, sitting almost at my feet in a squat rush-bottomed chair, with quaint bow legs and a back like a yard of ladder, she set to work on the holes Brocton's rapier had ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... has an artificial look; there is something ghastly and unnatural in the yellow of the faces, penetrated by a rose or carmine color on the cheeks. They are hideous in all the possible aspects and varieties of hideousness—undersized, squat, evil-eyed, pug-nosed, tawdry in dress, ungraceful in every motion; they really mar the landscape, so that you are glad to escape from them to your hotel, which you find a clean and comfortable building, where, if you are as fortunate as the traveler who relates ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... three, as they were in the act of looking at it, causing Leonard to make a great start, and then colour painfully. It was hard to believe, as Daisy said, that the old tower, that looked so short and squat below, could be so very high when you came to go up it; but the glimpses of the country, through the little loop-hole windows, were most inviting. At last, Aubrey, who was foremost, pushed up the trap-door, and emerged; but, as Dickie followed him, exclaimed, 'Here we are; ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... announce that some "men-bush" are approaching. Going to the veranda, we see some lean figures with big mops of hair coming slowly down the narrow path from the forest, with soft, light steps. Some distance behind follows a crowd of others, who squat down near the last shrubs and examine everything with shy, suspicious eyes, while the leaders approach the house. Nearly all carry old Snider rifles, always loaded and cocked. The leaders stand silent for a while near the veranda, then one of them whispers a few ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... for hear. The word "bowssen," too, is very frequently heard in these parts; it is a provincialism for a stall or shed where oxen are kept. "Boose" is the word from which it originally sprang. A very expressive phrase in common use is to "quad" or "quat"; it is equivalent to the word "squat." Other words in this dialect are "sprack," an adjective meaning quick or lively; and "frem" or "frum," a word derived from the Anglo-Saxon "fram," meaning fresh or flourishing. The latter word is also used in ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... Road he overtook a man, a squat, broad-shouldered fellow, who limped as he walked. Constans would have brushed by, but the man plucked at his sleeve, and he was forced to stop and accommodate his pace to that of his interlocutor. A ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... a short, squat, clean-shaven but hairy dark man, with coal-black hair sweeping round a big forehead, a determined face and large, indignant brown eyes. The Liverpool clergyman was of middle height, very thin, with snow-white hair, dark eyes and eyebrows, and a young ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... earnestly all up and down the wonderful stretch of country that lay along the Wall from north to south. She could see the tiny dots that went for the different homesteads, scattered here and there. Up at the head there lay, hard against the frowning hills, the squat, wide blur that was Courtrey's Stronghold. Her lips compressed ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... these elevated steppes, 7,000 feet or more above the level of the sea, and the bitter cold of the rarefied air before the dawn takes possession of the atmosphere. The shivering peones of the villages rise betimes to catch the sun's first rays, and stand or squat against the eastern side of their adobe huts, what time the orb of day shows his red disc above the far horizon. La capa de los pobres—"the poor man's cloak"—they term the sun, as with grateful benediction they watch his coming, and stamp ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... stood covered with a cloth and had an ikon and candles placed upon it. Papa entered just as I did, but by another door: whereupon the priest—a grey-headed old monk with a severe, elderly face—blessed him, and Papa kissed his small, squat, wizened hand. I did ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... she minister warm drinks unto you, as broths and caudle. She can likewise speak to you through the hole, and be heard: but if you hear the noise of feet or strange voices in that chamber, have a care to lie as squat [quiet] and close as ever you can. So may you safely hover [lie concealed]; for the cleverest soldier of them all shall be hard put to it to find you ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... over-sympathetic nature, not proud enough; while a long nose derives from the center of the upper will, the thoracic ganglion, our great center of curiosity, and benevolent or objective control. A thick, squat nose is the sensual-sympathetic nose, and the high, arched nose the sensual voluntary nose, having the curve of repudiation, as when we turn up our nose from a bad smell, but also the proud curve of haughtiness and subjective authority. The nose is one of the greatest indicators ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... branch,—the one on this side," said Legrand. The negro obeyed him promptly, and apparently with but little trouble, ascending higher and higher, until no glimpse of his squat figure could be obtained through the dense foliage which enveloped it. Presently his voice was heard in a ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... and hindering the escape of the effluvia—I know not, but I am far from being convinced even now that it is not so. A very good sportsman, and true friend of mine, insists upon it that birds give out no scent except from the feet, and that, consequently, if they squat without running they cannot be found. I do not, however, believe the theory, and hold it to be disproved by the fact that dead birds do give out scent. I have generally observed that there is no difficulty in ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... comfort, the ancient Egyptians gradually developed the art of making mats from papyrus, a plant as important to them as any of our trees, fibrous grasses, or hemp are to us. While at work on the manufacture of these mats, the weavers used to squat on the ground. They became skilful, both in constructing the fabric and arranging the colors; the latter were quite bright and effective, being chiefly red, blue, yellow, and green, with ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... 'What a squat little jockey!' exclaims Miss Hamilton, as a little dumpling of a man in Lincoln green is led past the stand on a fine bay horse, some one recognizing the rider as our old ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... down into the open drawer, and his eyes narrowed with a look of furtive eagerness that did not escape Blake. In a corner of the drawer was a squat black bottle and a tumbler. Ashton lifted them out and poured a half-glassful of whiskey that was thick and oily ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... right. Trying to assure herself that her father was a protection, she pushed open the door. She looked into an airless room, scattered with rubber boots, unsavory old corduroy caps, tattered magazines. By the stove nodded a wry-mouthed, squat old woman, and a tall, cheaply handsome man of forty. Tobacco juice stained the front of his stiff-bosomed, collarless shirt. His hands ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... not make her senses reel, This mystery, or dim her zeal, Till by degrees she seems to feel Her broken lot; She roams aloof, she grows depressed; And then, her broody sorrow guessed, Men lure her to a well-filled nest And bid her squat. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various
... he happens to be, and just large enough to admit him. He glides through like a phantom, without making the least grain of sand creak beneath his tread. He is perfectly naked, and all his body is rubbed over with oil; a two-edged knife is suspended from his neck. He will squat down close to your couch, and, with incredible coolness and dexterity, will gather up the sheet in very little folds, so as to occupy the least surface possible; then, passing to the other side, he will lightly tickle the sleeper, whom he seems ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... spears and knives, leave the encampment just before dark, walk a mile or two to the place where the deer happen to be pastured, build themselves little huts of trailing pine branches, about three feet in height and two in diameter, and squat in them throughout the long, cold hours of an arctic night, watching for wolves. The worse the weather is, the greater the necessity for vigilance. Sometimes, in the middle of a dark winter's night, when a terrible north-easterly storm is howling across the steppe in clouds ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... necropolis of Persepolis, where a pair of such altars exist; these are cut, each out of a single block, in a rocky mass which rises some thirteen feet above the level of the surrounding plain. They are of cubic form and squat appearance, looking like towers flanked at the four corners by supporting columns which are connected by circular arches; above a narrow moulding rises a crest of somewhat triangular projections; the hearth is hollowed out on the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... he dared not move forward into the sunlight or backward into the shade. She had not seen him yet. She was playing with the chain of flowers—a small wood goblin sprung out of nowhere, a little black-haired devil fired up from hell through the solid earth and out into this empty glade to squat there right in his track. Then she stood upon her feet, and admired the length of the chain ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... was no draught, and the feeble little flame burned quite still, casting a faint yellow stain on the ceiling like the refection from a buttercup held beneath a chin. These ceilings are far too low! Across the wide, squat window the apple branches fell in black stripes which never stirred. It was too dark to see things clearly. At the foot of the bed was a chest, and there Mrs. Hopgood had sat down, moving her lips as ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy |
