"Squatting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... feasting and gossiping; they were herded around the fire, squatting Turk fashion, steaming pannikins on the ground by their sides, heaped plates on ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... summer breeze. I have seen a little thing convert a crew on the point of mutiny into a set of rollicking, good-natured souls who—until the wind veered again—would not hurt a fly. So with these. They spread themselves into a circle, squatting or kneeling or standing upon the white sand in the bright sunshine, their sinewy hands that should have been ingrained red clasped over their knees, or, arms akimbo, resting upon their hips, on their scoundrel faces a broad smile, and in their eyes that had looked on nameless horrors ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... December, 1787, the expedition made the eastern end of the Navigator Islands, that is, the Samoan Group. As the ships approached, a party of natives were observed squatting under cocoanut trees. Presently sixteen canoes put off from the land, and their occupants, after paddling round the vessels distrustfully, ventured to approach and proffer cocoanuts in exchange for strings of beads and strips of red cloth. The natives ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott
... which could have been more usefully employed elsewhere, and his presence, so far as it had this effect, was of great service to the perilously weak British force during the first few weeks of the war. If the commandos squatting before Kimberley had instead been sent to raid southwards towards the Karroo, and to inflame the Dutch districts in the Cape Colony, they would have met with little resistance, and advancing with daily increasing numbers ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... blame, I guess. Then things began to get good. First we ran across a flock of ten ptarmigan. They were in the burned-over semi-barren of the hill-top. They seem to lack entirely the instinct to preserve themselves by flying. Only ran ahead, squatting in apparent terror every few feet. We followed with our pistols. I killed eight and George one, my last was the old bird, which for a time kept away from us, running harder than the rest, trying to hide among the Arctic shrubs. George says they are always tame on a calm day. Their ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... along ahead of his train. But he has no need to slow up, for occasional cross-beams stick out far enough to admit of standing out of reach, and when he comes up alongside, he and the fireman look out of the window of the cab and see me squatting on the end of one of these handy beams, and letting the bicycle ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... piled round with bags, just the bare tip of the muzzle protruding, and, indeed, thanks to the dusk which occluded the top of the stairs, giving no indication of its presence to the enemy. Thus, with the wall manned, and the remainder of his little party squatting on the stone floor of the gun-chamber ready to support their comrades, Henri and his men waited for perhaps half an hour, during which time the fusillade from the men of the 24th Brandenburg Regiment sent a hail of bullets in their direction. They thudded against the bags continuously, ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... to Jenkins Creek, where the McLeods had commenced their squatting operations, ran along the shore at some distance from the entrance to the creek, so that Redding could pass without encountering the newcomers, whom he was anxious to avoid until the question of the invasion of the Fur Company's ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... Everybody is squatting about on scant corners and ledges waiting for the eight o'clock bell. I squat next the thrifty Spanish lady, whereat she immediately begins telling me ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... I can raise a wigwam's smoke, And the copper tribe invoke,— Scalps and wampum, bows and knives, Slender maidens, greasy wives, Papoose hanging on a tree, Chieftains squatting silently, Feathers, beads, and hideous paint, Medicine-man and wooden-saint,— Forest-framed the ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... and fancying herself safe, Diana made a plunge to get through an uncommonly tangled thicket of interlacing branches, and found herself no longer alone. Miss Gunn was three feet off, squatting on the ground to pick the more restfully; and on the other side of her was Diana's cousin, ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... up on the porch rail right beside us. The others were all right there, squatting on the porch or sitting on the rail. We could see across the river and past the old ramshackle buildings there and right over the village of Little Valley to the ridge. That big tree stood up higher than all the others and it ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... we were dragging our sledges forward, the train commonly stood still, and, not to frighten the bear, all the men concealed themselves behind the sledges, with the exception of the marksman, who, squatting down in some convenient place, waited till his prey should come sufficiently within range to be killed with certainty. It happened once during foggy weather on the ice at Wahlenberg Bay that the bear that was expected and had been clearly seen by all of us, instead of approaching with his usual ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... been captured. He was forthwith conducted into the presence of the sheikh, who, with his brother Abdalah and other elders of the tribe, was seated by a fire beneath a group of palm-trees. Here, squatting on the ground, with a guard standing over him, he was allowed to listen to the consultation they were holding as to the ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... rise the harsh voices of those who have come to sell, and who, putting no restraint upon their eagerness to get money, thrust their rosaries and medals almost in the pilgrims' faces. Beggars squatting or lying against the wall on either side of the steps exhibit the bare stump of a leg that wofully needs washing, a withered arm, or the ravages of some incurable and gnawing disease. Yet are they all terribly energetic, wailing forth prayers almost incessantly, or screaming ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... left the fire in a hurry and, squatting in the snow with a tin cup full of steaming coffee and a plate heaped with fried bacon and griddle cakes, were soon too ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... hired to Athens, we decided not to incur the extra expense. Soon after arriving, however, while Dhemetri was making us a soup, and Diomedes was taking care of our horses, and Epaminondas was roasting us a joint of lamb, while we were squatting half-asleep on bolsters on the floor, hugging our knees, looking dreamily at the fire, and longing for supper and bed, the driver of the carriage came in, and addressed us in recommendation of his establishment in his choicest Frank, "Carrozza-very ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... a surprise awaited the two boys. The captain was stumping back and forth near the fire, his usually good-natured face nearly purple with suppressed anger, while, squatting on his heels before the fire, sat Indian Charley, his face impassive but his keen beady eyes watching ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... is many-mouthed with caves and cut with passages running from cave to cave, so that the inhabitants may go and come hidden from sight. Jawbone and Hairyman and Lowbrow, of the Stone Age, would be at home there, squatting on their hunkers and tearing at their raw kill with their long incisors. It does not seem a place for men who walk erect, wear woven fabrics, enjoy a written language, and use soap and safety razors. One would not be surprised to see some figure swing down by a long, hairy arm from a branch of a ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... laid carefully on a chair. The astonishing woman was a tramp once more, squatting on the brick floor, drawing on to her bare feet the shapeless excuses for boots which had been toasting before ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... to have a coast," he said to Bud. A smooth board which he found near the woodpile furnished him with a fine toboggan. By the help of an overturned chicken-coop, which he dragged across the yard, he managed to climb to the top of the shed. Squatting down on the board, he gave himself a starting push with one hand. The downward progress was not so smooth or so rapid ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the canvas of sea and sky. The northern dome is a blush of rose deepening to a warm terra-cotta along the horizon, and the water reflects it upward to the gaze. Tiny Wilson petrels flit by like swallows; seals shove their dark forms above the placid surface; the shore is lined with penguins squatting in grotesque repose. The south is pallid with light—the circling sun. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... improves, it is sufficient to use one teaspoonful of the tincture of iodine and one tablespoonful of the lactic acid to two quarts of water. These injections are quite efficient and have the advantage of being perfectly harmless. One point about the injections: they should be taken not in the standing or squatting position (in which position the fluid comes right out), but while lying down, over a douche pan. The douche bag should be only about a foot above the bed, so that the irrigating fluid may come out slowly; the patient, after each injection taken in the ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... instant. Then, he landed with a jounce in a heap of brush and dead leaves. Squatting there, breathless, he stretched out his mittened hand, along the ground. At the end of less than another yard of this exploring, his fingers came again to the edge of the world and were thrust ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... long-contracted amity forget, And spring asunder with elastic force; Nay, e'en the very cap, of texture coarse, Whose ruby cincture crown'd that brow of jet, Uprose in agony—the Gorgon's head Was but a type of Nick's up-squatting ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... even the most imperfect and degraded, has something that ought to be sacred to us, for there is in all religions a secret yearning after the true, though unknown, God. Whether we see the Papua squatting in dumb meditation before his fetish, or whether we listen to Firdusi exclaiming: 'The heighth and the depth of the whole world have their centre in Thee, O my God! I do not know Thee what Thou art: but ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... stare at a coldly glaring spider that was barring their path. It was a small spider, barely more than waist-high. But something in its malevolent eyes made the two men hesitate about attacking it. At the same time it was squatting in the only clear path in sight, with tangles of stalks and leaves on either side. A journey around the ferocious brute might be ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... wrote "The Pit" and "The Octopus" should arise in Canada and write a Wheat-Politics novel about T. A. Crerar. This man's photograph was once published squatting Big-Chief-wise in the front row of 300 farmers on a raid to Ottawa—I think early in the war about prices. It was a second to the last delegation which the farmers intend to send to Ottawa. The next one was in 1918, when the farmers went to protest against conscription. ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... had a fine sense of irony. And so for three weeks Dona Teresa and I—and for forty-eight hours Sister Marta too—had been lurking and doubling, squatting in cellars crawling on roofs, breaking cover at night to snatch our food, all under Felipe's generalship. And he had carried us through. Perhaps he had a soft corner in his heart for old Teresa. He and she were just ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... the market-place were various groups of Iligan natives and Moros from the hills, all squatting on the ground, and haggling over the price of fish and eggs. There were Moro chiefs, looking world-wearied and indifferent, followed by their attendant slaves; there were thrifty Moros willing to sell one anything from a kris or a barong to the very clothes on their backs; there were handsome ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... women, who were squatting on the ground in triangular shapes, moving their hands, either plaiting straw or in kneading something in bowls. But when they had looked for a moment undiscovered, they were seen, and Mr. Flushing, advancing into the centre ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... pan, squatting down, and chucked some water from the palm of his hand into the open jaws, upon the swollen tongue. The dog licked his hand, whined again, tried to stand up, failed, succeeded with the aid of friendly fingers in its ruff and eagerly lapped ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... inside. Sal on the sofa playing the concertina; Dad squatting on the edge of a flat stone at the corner of the fireplace; Dave on another opposite; both gazing into the fire, which was almost out, and listening intently to the music; the dog, dripping wet, coiled at their feet, shivering; Mother sitting dreamily at the table, ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... fond of yours," said Ashweesha, with a pleasant smile, leading her guests to a large cushion on the floor, and squatting them down ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... tremendous row; so, leaving the boobies to quiet down, I made my way toward the flocks of rabihorcados. Here and there in the thick growth of green weed were boobies squatting on isolated nests. No sooner had I gotten close to the rabihorcados than I made sure they were the far-famed frigate pelicans, or man-of-war birds. They were as tame as the boobies; as I walked among them many did not fly at all. Others rose with soft, swishing sound ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... of the establishment, in their Sunday jackets and capotes; while here and there the dark visage of an Indian peered out from among their white ones. But round the stove—which had been removed to one side to leave space for the dancers—the strangest group was collected. Squatting down on the floor, in every ungraceful attitude imaginable, sat about a dozen Indian women, dressed in printed calico gowns, the chief peculiarity of which was the immense size of the balloon-shaped sleeves, and the extreme scantiness, both in length and width, of the skirts. Coloured handkerchiefs ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... windbound or through stress of weather, makes use of the anchoring ground a mile and a half due north from you as you stand at the back door of the "Ship Inn" in Brenzett. A dilapidated windmill near by lifting its shattered arms from a mound no loftier than a rubbish heap, and a Martello tower squatting at the water's edge half a mile to the south of the Coastguard cottages, are familiar to the skippers of small craft. These are the official seamarks for the patch of trustworthy bottom represented on the Admiralty charts by an irregular oval of dots ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... There I stayed, squatting on my feet on the mats, admiring the mimic volcano which in the orthodox artistic way the charcoal was arranged to represent, and trying my best to warm myself over the idea. But the idea proved almost as cold comfort as the brazier itself. The higher aesthetic part ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... speak, but it is very difficult to get at them. Our keepers and M. de M., whose property touches ours, have had various members of the gang arrested, but they always begin again. The promiscuity of living is something awful, girls and young men squatting and sleeping in the same room on heaps of dirty rags. There have been some arrests for infanticide, when a baby's appearance and disappearance was too flagrant, but the girls don't care. They do their ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... Carved Stone Figure of the god of sports and dancing (Xochipilli- Miacuilxochitl, "five flowers''), squatting on a stool, decorated with flowers and tonallo emblems. Plateau region, Mexico. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... should hinder the tennis of the rest of the community, Irene obeyed the message, and presented herself in the room where she had been introduced on her arrival. It was now full of girls of all ages, some sitting, some standing, and some squatting on the floor. Rachel Moseley, the owner of the long dark pigtail, seemed in a position of command, for she motioned Irene to a vacant chair, then rapped on the table with a ruler to ensure silence. She had to tap not once but ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... (when I came to live here) had after all a great many of the old English country characteristics. Dependent on the town for their living the most of them may have been by that time; yet they had derived their outlook and their habits from the earlier half-squatting, half-yeoman people; so that I found myself amongst neighbours rustic enough to justify me in speaking of them as villagers. I have come across their like elsewhere, and I am not deceived. They had the country touch. They were a survival of the England ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... mentality reflected the life they led. Contrasting their heavy bodies with their feeble legs, which grew shorter with disuse, a Tacoma humorist last summer gravely proved to a party of English visitors that in a few generations more, had not the white man seized their fishing grounds, the squatting Siwashes would have had no ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... strongly that men ought to know when to stop. There is nothing more melancholy and contemptible than to see a successful man, who has brought out a brood of fine things, sitting meekly on addled eggs, or, still worse, squatting complacently among eggshells. It is like the story of the old tiresome Breton farmer whose wife was so annoyed by his ineffective fussiness, that she clapt him down to sit on a clutch of stone eggs for the rest of his life. How often have I thought how deplorable it was to see a man issuing ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... walked over to where Bud was squatting beside the wounded cow-puncher. By this time his eyes were accustomed to the half-darkness, and he could easily distinguish the long length of the fellow, and even noted that the dark eyes were regarding him questioningly out of ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... where the stage always seems set for opera-bouffe There were no more pretty Tziganes, with disheveled hair and dirty, bare breasts, to offer you baskets of roses and white lilies. There were no Turks in red fezes squatting in the dust, hunting among their rags for fleas, and there were no more slender peasants in tight white-wool trousers and beautiful embroidered shirts. Everything, just by crossing a river, had grown more serious and sober-colored and several sizes larger. Pale-blue uniforms gave ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... late one afternoon after O Tent[o] Sama (the sun-Lord of Heaven), which had been hidden behind clouds for a fortnight, shone out on the muddy streets. In a moment, as with the promptness of a military drill, scores of people rushed out of their houses and with faces westward, kneeling, squatting, began prayer and worship before the great luminary. Besides all the gods, supreme, subordinate and local, there is in nearly every house the Kami-dana or god-shelf. This is usually over the door inside. It contains images with little ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... be any better off than the Yggdrasil Company, squatting on a guano heap on one continent!" he burst out. "Five years from now, they'll be making more money out of bat dung than we'll be making ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... Yorkshire Dick said this, with that curious gypsy intonation that turns English into a foreign tongue if you forget the words and listen only to the voice. He was squatting in the sunshine, with his back against an oak sapling, a black cutty under his nose, and Meg, my small fox-terrier, between his thighs. In those days, being just fifteen, I had taken a sketch-book and put myself ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... camp-fires blazed on every side, and even the unbounded Indian hospitality was strained to provide for the throng of guests. Thus, hour after hour, and day after day, the issue was debated in the presence of hundreds, some squatting, some lying at full length, all absolutely silent except when ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... attract Tad's attention was the mountaineer, squatting down with head thrust forward, his rifle held across his chest, the man's hand over the trigger-frame. Butler knew that the first finger of the right hand was toying with the trigger. His glances followed the direction indicated by the muzzle of the weapon. Then Tad's face flushed ...
— The Pony Rider Boys with the Texas Rangers • Frank Gee Patchin
... before I've finished, and then I won't have space to wag my elbows. Can your imagination rise to a great house with people waiting in every room, jammed in as tight as they'll fit, and two layers of them squatting in the cellar? Well, that's my house of business on an average day. The folk come in from the county fifty miles off, and eat bread and treacle on the doorstep, so as to be first in when the housekeeper comes down. The medical officer of health made an official complaint ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... been squatting down, or whether it was the slope of the ground that suddenly revealed him, I know not, but there he was not ten paces away. I could see that he wore an oilskin and sou'wester and judged him at once as ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... were received by the Chief of the Abira tribe, a great potentate who sat in a long hammock chair surrounded by courtiers and ministers squatting on the ground and holding spears of state on each side of him. Having welcomed us he escorted us through the village which is of great extent and well arranged. Opposite his square hut or palace is the Guard ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... and stole to a narrow window in one end of the house. Peering cautiously inside, he saw, within three feet of him, a woman of marvellous, imposing beauty, clothed in a splendid loose robe of leopard skins. The hut was packed close to the small space in which she stood with the squatting figures ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... the lower part of the town. The sight was heartrending. All the cabins of the coloured inhabitants had fallen into the muddy waters. They were there in hundreds, squatting upon these moving wrecks, with eyes burning from fever. Their white teeth chattered with hunger. Right and left, everywhere, were dead bodies with swollen stomachs floating about, knocking up against the wooden piles. Many ladies ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... squatting on his heels, folding up the paper. He looks up.] Ain't yer ever thought of that, instead of ...
— The Master of Mrs. Chilvers • Jerome K. Jerome
... Joyce, squatting in her place, blinked a little breathlessly to shift from her senses an oppression of alarm, and settled down to wait for her. At least it was true that nothing ever happened to Joan; even when she fell into a water-butt she suffered no ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... the studio. The hissing samovar, the tea-pot, the sugar, and the nearly empty decanter of rum stand on the low round table in the fast-being-gutted room. WELLWYN in his ulster and soft hat, is squatting on the little stool in front of the blazing fire, staring into it, and smoking a hand-made cigarette. He has a moulting air. Behind him the humble-men pass, embracing busts ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of my surprise when I found it in possession of two savages of strange appearance. My first thought was that I had lost all, but, drawing nearer, I discovered that Timoteo and the chief were also there, squatting on the ground, devouring the remains of my breakfast. They had returned from the royal tribe, who had offered to cut a way from their side, and these two ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... amid the boughs of great trees, during the daytime, he is very rarely seen squatting on a thick branch, as other apes, and particularly the Gibbons, do. The Orang, on the contrary, confines himself to the slender leafy branches, so that he is seen right at the top of the trees, a mode of life which ...
— Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... Near Marmoustiers the seneschal, rendered sleepy by the heat, seeing it was the month of August, waggled about in his saddle, like a diadem upon the head of a cow, and seeing so frolicsome and so pretty a lady by the side of so old a fellow, a peasant girl, who was squatting near the trunk of a tree and drinking water out of her stone jug inquired of a toothless old hag, who picked up a trifle by gleaning, if this princess was ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... his shoulders on either side. His costume was that of ordinary civilization, save for a pair of new, tight moccasins. Having apparently all the time there was, he had been a frequent spectator of operations, squatting by the hour watching the work. Occasionally his interest had been rewarded by a meal or a plug of tobacco. These things he had accepted without comment and without thanks. His taciturnity and ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... and "yanked" him back to his place in the flock without an effort. He steered his geese with that stick as easily as another man would steer a yawl. A few hours afterward we saw him sitting on a stone at a corner, in the midst of the turmoil, sound asleep in the sun, with his geese squatting around him, or dodging out of the way of asses and men. We came by again, within the hour, and he was taking account of stock, to see whether any of his flock had strayed or been stolen. The way he did it was unique. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with the most overwhelming solemnity (nothing short of these words can describe it), till we got to Government House. There was a dead silence nearly all the way; the natives standing or squatting in their apathetic way, and the Europeans as grim as death. All that was to be heard was the rattle of the gun-carriage, and the tramping of the horses, and the minute-guns from the fort and ships. The housetops, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the place was inhabited. Squatting in the middle of the cabin, seated on her legs crossed under her, with nothing between her and the wet earth, there crouched a woman with a child in her arms. At first, so dark was the place, Herbert hardly thought that the object before him was a human being. She did not move when ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... sketch of Rag's? I had nearly forgotten to mention it, the one with the three ropes of life. I am climbing ahead with fiendish energy. Rag follows, steadily ascending, weighted as he is with a treasure, a box marked "Mrs. Rag, with care," and your noble form is squatting on the floor, a glass of the best blend at your feet, and a cigar you are enjoying from which rises the legend that makes you say, "What the deuce am I to do with this confounded rope? Hang myself, I wonder?" Nonsense, to be sure; but do come and tell ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... of a centralised administration were laid. Severe fugitive laws were issued against those who attempted to change their domicile and against the proprietors who should harbour the runaways. Unless the peasant chose to face the difficulties of "squatting" in the inhospitable northern forests, or resolved to brave the dangers of the steppe, he could nowhere escape the heavy ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... loin-cloth, one in a handkerchief imperfectly adjusted; some, and these the more considerable, tattooed from head to foot in awful patterns; some barbarous and knived; one, who sticks in my memory as something bestial, squatting on his hams in a canoe, sucking an orange and spitting it out again to alternate sides with ape-like vivacity— all talking, and we could not understand one word; all trying to trade with us who had no thought of trading, or offering us island curios at prices palpably ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it was wet. Davidson, feeling about her head, came to a place where the crushed bone gave way under his fingers. But even before that discovery he knew that she was dead. The pursuing Frenchman had flung her down with a kick from behind, and, squatting on her back, was battering in her skull with the weight she herself had fastened to his stump, when the totally unexpected Davidson loomed up in the ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... Fancy they're just beginning pool now, on that stunning table. Come along, Brown; don't miss your chance. We shall be sure to divide the pools, as we've missed the claret. Cool hands and cool heads, you know. Green on brown, pink your player in hand! That's a good deal pleasanter than squatting here all ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... lie buried; furthermore that children, born on Sunday, can see this flame, and if they remain calm and unmoved, they can secure the treasure. One would never have thought that such a treasure was hidden in old Farmer Landfried, and that squatting over it was black obstinacy and contempt for humankind. But Amrei saw the little blue flame hovering above him, and knew how to conduct herself in such a way as to release ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... hint of serious intention in the manner of the shipping clerk to induce P. Sybarite, after the hesitation of an instant, to accede to his request. Squatting down upon the steps, he accepted a ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... As soon as the sand-flies ceased, myriads of musquitoes began their work of torture, without much preparatory piping, and kept it up all night.[132] These pests were occasionally relieved or assisted by piums—minute flies that alight unnoticed, and squatting close to the skin, suck their fill of blood, leaving dark spots and a disagreeable irritation. Our hands were nearly black with their punctures. We also made the acquaintance of the montuca, a large black fly whose horny lancets make a gash ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... several spots of ground cleared for cultivation on the hills, and at night many fires on the beach. Landing was found to be in most parts extremely difficult on account of the surf. Many of the natives were seen armed with lances and squatting down amongst the coral rocks, as if to conceal their numbers. Upon rowing into a bay with the ship's boat it was pursued by ten canoes full of men and obliged to return. Mr. Whalfeldt, the surveyor, and the second mate proceeded to make a survey of ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... and vanish with it into his own country away to the northeast, leaving B'selius and his broken camp to fend for themselves. This determination was still unshaken; the thing held him like a charm, and he sat down, squatting in the grass with his knees drawn up to his chin and his eyes ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... when duty and inclination coincide. The girls walked forward briskly. The interior of the cow-house was dark as an Eastern temple. The gipsies had established themselves in the dimmest corner, and were squatting on bundles of straw under a manger. Obviously they were extremely dirty and dilapidated. Their hands and faces appeared to be unacquainted with soap and water, their clothes were tattered, their shoes seemingly in the last stage ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... looked, the man, squatting on his heels, bent forward to touch up one of the letters. If he had been deliberately posing, he could not have assumed ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... ice-cream! They eat it off the seats, half of them kneeling or squatting on the floor; they blow on it, and put it in their pockets to carry home to baby. Two little shavers discovered to be feeding each other, each watching the smack develop on the other's lips as the acme of his own bliss, are "cousins"; that is why. Of cake there is a double supply. It is a dozen ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... only sound was the occasional thud of a mallet—had just been finished; and the headsman's "valets" or assistants, in frock-coats and tall silk hats, were waiting and strolling about in a patient way. But the instrument itself, how base and shameful it looked, squatting on the ground like some filthy beast, disgusted with the work it had to accomplish! What! those few beams lying on the ground, and those others barely nine feet high which rose from it, keeping the knife in position, constituted the machine which avenged Society, the instrument which gave ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Still squatting on his heels, he continued examining the fragments and tossing them into the pan. Suddenly there came to him a premonition of danger. It seemed a shadow had fallen upon him. But there was no shadow. His heart had given ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... unfortunate enough, as the case might be—to be squatting in a front-line trench this fine morning and looking through a periscope, you wouldn't see much. Just over the top, not more than twenty feet away, would be your barbed-wire entanglements, a thick network of wire stretched on iron posts ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... Longuant was squatting before his lodge. A piece of wood was laid across his lap, and he was chopping rank tobacco with a scalping knife. He smelled of oil, and smoke, and half-cured hides; yet he met me as a ruler meets an ambassador. As I stumbled after ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... not half as amusing as the Indian towns," Tucker said. "Last voyage I went to Calcutta, and it is jolly in the natives' town there, seeing the natives squatting in their little shops, tinkering and tailoring, and all sorts of things. And such a crowd of them in the streets! This is a poor place in comparison, and most of the shops you see have European names over them. However, one gets the shade; ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... smoke here set two or three more a-coughing, and obliged them all to rise and seek for purer—perhaps it were better to say less impure—air in another part of the level, where the draught kept the smoke away. Here, squatting down on heaps of wet rubbish, and sticking their candles against the damp walls, they continued their meal, and here the captain and Oliver left them, retraced their steps to the foot of the shaft, ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... rivers of people swarmed along the sidewalks, spattered with black mud, which made each shoe leave a scarlike impression. Overhead elevated trains with a shrill grinding of the wheels stopped at the station, which upon its leglike pillars seemed to resemble some monstrous kind of crab squatting over the street. The quick fat puffings of the engines could be heard. Down an alley there were somber curtains of purple and black, on which street lamps dully glittered ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... himself and sat up. A Frenchman who had just pushed a Russian soldier away was squatting by the fire, engaged in roasting a piece of meat stuck on a ramrod. His sleeves were rolled up and his sinewy, hairy, red hands with their short fingers deftly turned the ramrod. His brown morose face ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... garden, showing signs of care and attention. The houses near are all one-storied, log-built, and plastered with mud inside and out. There are also several birch-bark wigwams, full of smoke and swarthy children; the owners squatting at their low doors, or, with their dirty blankets wrapped more tightly round them, leaning on the fence to stare at ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... the drawing room she saw no one there but Antonia, who, squatting on the floor, was absorbed heart and soul in copying her Chinese dragons. Susy was not in a humour to talk to Antonia, she therefore proceeded to go further afield. She was anxious to find Hester and Annie. ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... fall than the huerta was left without a light, without a person upon the roads, as if death had taken possession of the dismal plain, so green and smiling under the sun. A single red spot, a tear of light, trembled in this obscurity. It was Caldera's cabin, where the women, squatting upon the floor, around the kitchen lamp, sighed with fright, anticipating the strident shriek of the sick youth,—the chattering of his teeth, the violent contortions of his body whenever he was seized with convulsions, struggling to ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... seemed a vast human ant- hill, which would presently be astir with its teeming human life, as though the Sun God in his last departing stride had roused it with a careless kick. Even as Comus watched he could see the beginnings of the evening's awakening. Women, squatting in front of their huts, began to pound away at the rice or maize that would form the evening meal, girls were collecting their water pots preparatory to a walk down to the river, and enterprising goats made tentative forays through ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... of debris, left by the workmen, still littered the ground in the vicinity. A board walk led from the street to the wide, arched entrance. From the steps one could look down the street at the station and the other buildings squatting in the sunlight, dingy with the dust of many dry days. Except for the cowponies and the buckboard and the prairie schooner there was a total absence of life or movement, offering a striking contrast to the bustling cities to which the young man had ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... painstakingly for half-an-hour, both of them using every trick they knew to make me laugh or show surprise, and Grim nodding approval each time I contrived not to. More difficult than acting deaf and dumb was the trick of squatting with my legs crossed, but I had learned it after a fashion in India years ago, and only ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... besides hammocks and cooking utensils; yet we were every where asked to go in and sit down: all the floors were cleanly swept, and a log of wood or a rude stool was generally to be found for a seat for the stranger, the people themselves squatting on the ground. ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... Squatting coolies sprang up and raced to hold his pony. Others, in the shade of the wall, cackled when they saw a Son of the Red-Haired so beplastered and sopping. A few pointed at his bundle, with grunts of sudden interest; ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... investment of English capital, and ensuring success to the experiments to be tried of cultivating the estates by free labour, lay in the timely introduction of proper regulations. It would be vexatious if, after all, the negroes should take to squatting, and pass their lives in indolence; but half of the good work would have been achieved until the black was raised to the condition of a free and laborious citizen. As matters stood, the negroes ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... sought their well-known roosts. They stood two and two, closely crowded together on the perches or huddled in the holes. They drew their heads into their feathered throats and slept. The rumour diminished to just a soft mumbling; and then nothing more. The pigeon that sat over there, squatting low on her eggs, faded from sight in her dark corner; and the whole upper row vanished in ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... girls would be playing in a ring, the women would shout from gallery to gallery and the men would chat in their shirtsleeves; some fellow, squatting on the floor, would scrape away monotonously at the ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... yet, I grieve to say, the worthy government of the New Netherlands was not suffered to enjoy this grand acquisition unmolested; for, in the year 1654, the local Yankees of Connecticut—those swapping, bargaining, squatting enemies of the Manhattoes—made a daring inroad into this neighborhood and founded a colony called Westchester, or, as the ancient Dutch records term it, Vest Dorp, in the right of one Thomas Pell, who pretended to have purchased the whole surrounding country of the Indians, and stood ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... the wall; his light showed a series of little alcoves, and in the first of these we ran into a puzzling thing—a very weird thing. As the light flashed into the alcove, I saw first just an empty space, and then, squatting on the floor, I saw—it! A little creature about as big as a large rat, it was, gray and huddled and evidently startled by our appearance. It had the queerest, most devilish little face!—pointed ears or horns and satanic eyes that seemed to sparkle ...
— Valley of Dreams • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... (despite the brilliant moon, I doubted the evidence of my sight), wearing a tweed overcoat and a soft felt hat with the brim turned down, sprang up, from nowhere as it seemed, swooped upon the horrible figure squatting, simianesque, between Smith's shoulder-blades, and ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... 'There's luck in odd numbers, says Rory O'More.' 'There's luck here,' said I; and at it we went just beside the rose-tree. What's the result? Look at that prospectus: a company with a capital of two hundred thousand; the whole island in our hands in a week; and Antoine squatting on it now like ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of the bowl, save a central circle in which the head, fore-limbs, and anterior part of the body are represented, is decorated by spattering. Within this spattered area there are highly interesting figures, prominent among which is a squatting figure of a man, with the hand raised to the mouth and holding a ceremonial cigarette, as if engaged in smoking. The seven patches in black might well be regarded as either footprints or leaves, four of which appear to be attached to the band inclosing the central ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... Here, squatting by the doubtful flame Of three poor sticks, without a roof Above your head, impassive dame ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... drive through Cairo to the Pyramids, whether you spin out there in a motor, or trot on a donkey, or lilt on a camel, squatting cross-legged on a load of green bersim. Past the great swinging bridge, and the Island of Ghezireh (the word that in itself means "island") begins the six-mile dyke, which is the road made by Ismail to please the Empress Eugenie. Since her visit, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... are as follows:—The men sit on the left hand, squatting on the floor, with their knees up, and their hands clasped round them. Opposite, in the same posture, sit the women, whose appearance is most cadaverous and sepulchral, dressed in the Quaker costume. After sitting for some time in this ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... the sea coast. The former, continually on horseback, scouring the plains, gaining their food by hardy exercise, and subsisting chiefly on flesh, are generally sinewy, tall, meagre, but well formed and of bold and fierce deportment. The latter, lounging about the river banks, or squatting or curved up in their canoes, are generally low in stature, ill-shaped, with crooked legs, thick ankles, and broad flat feet. They are inferior also in muscular power and activity, and in game qualities and appearance, to their hard-riding brethren ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... of religion is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion indeed is man's self-consciousness and self-estimation while he has not found his feet in the universe. But Man is no abstract being, squatting outside the world. Man is the world of men, the State, society. This State, this society produces religion, which is an inverted world-consciousness, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... aiming at the improvement of the native labour supply whilst in effect it does the opposite. It provides that not more than five families may reside upon one farm, the 'family' being an adult male with or without women and children. Ostensibly the law purports to prevent the squatting together of natives in large numbers and in idleness. As a matter of fact however the law is not applied in the cases of Boer farmers. From the President downwards the Boers own farms on which hundreds of families are allowed to remain, paying their hut-taxes ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... his consolation, in a bark hut. This "melancholy Jaques" lamented the state of depravity to which the colony was reduced, and assured me that there were shepherdesses in the bush! This startling fact should not be startling, but for the disproportion of sexes, and the squatting system which checks the spread of families. If pastoralisation were not one thing, and colonisation another, the occupation of tending sheep should be as fit and proper for women as for men. The pastoral life, so favourable to love and the enjoyment of nature, has ever been a favourite theme ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... adults of gouty or rheumatic tendencies who suffer from indigestion, constipation, and oxaluria—in fact, the same type of patients who are liable to lumbago, and the two affections are frequently associated. In hospital practice it is commonly met with in coal-miners and others who assume a squatting position at work. The onset of the pain may follow over-exertion and exposure to cold and wet, especially in those who do not take regular exercise. Any error of diet or indulgence in beer or wine may contribute ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... the dogs were disputing over the bones tossed to them after the evening meal, while the squaws and braves, gathered in separate groups, were squatting ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... butter is put into a large flat dish, to stand for twenty-four hours, at the end of which time, if the dish is as dirty as it should be, the milk has curdled. Then, with a tin spoon, Mukkun skims off the cream and puts it into a large pickle bottle, and squatting on the ground, more suo, bumps the bottle upon a pad until the butter is made. The artistic work of preparing it for presentation remains. First it is dyed yellow with a certain seed, that it may please the saheb's taste, for buffalo butter is quite white, and you know it is an ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... young girls who had been sheltered in convent schools, now submerged in the great crowd of fugitives, so utterly without the comforts of life that the common decencies of civilization could not be regarded, but gave way to the unconcealed necessities of human nature. Peasant women, squatting on the dock-sides, fed their babes as they wept over them and wailed like stricken creatures. Children with scared eyes, as though they had been left alone in the horror of darkness, searched piteously for parents who had been separated from them in the struggle for a train or ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... description of houses seem to be entirely destitute of an article of furniture scarcely known in the native habitations of Bengal; and these seats seem to be preferred to the more primitive method of squatting on the ground, which still prevails, the number of chairs in each mansion being rather circumscribed, excepting in the best houses, where they abound. Sofas and divans, though seen, are not so common as in Egypt, and perhaps the divan, ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... ready, the mediums bid the men to play on the tong-a-tong (cf. p. 314); then, squatting beside the pig, they stroke its side with oiled fingers, meanwhile chanting appropriate diams (cf. p. 296). This done, they begin to summon spirits into their bodies, and from them learn what must be done ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... wait for him to come up and found him nowhere in sight. Hereupon I hasted back the way I had come and after some while beheld him prone in the dust; he lay outstretched upon his face in the hot glare of the sun, the dog Pluto squatting beside him, and as I approached the desolate figure I knew that he was weeping. So came I running to fall beside him on my knees and lifting that abased head, saw indeed the agony of ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... on the horribly frowsy, rat-overrun, dervish steamer "Bordein" to Dakhala, the railhead. The steamer was packed upon and below deck with British soldiers, about 50 of whom were sick, whilst several were wounded. Stowed almost like cattle, sitting, squatting, lying anywhere, anyhow, without shade or shelter, we underwent two days of it on board. It was found necessary to tie up occasionally for wood (fuel), and at night the steamer was always moored to the bank. These occasions provided the needed opportunity to prepare and partake ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... amount of opportunity for observation, and his known care and ability in this respect, compel me to assume his accuracy; but I can say that I saw a good many of these eyes among them, and indeed once, having about twenty of these Kuni people squatting in front of me, I observed that about half of them ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... ten minutes the old fellow came out of Volkner's store, carrying two or three stout fishing-lines, several packets of hooks, and half a dozen ship biscuits. He grinned as he passed the group on the verandah, and then squatting down on the sward near by began to uncoil the lines and bend on ...
— The Colonial Mortuary Bard; "'Reo," The Fisherman; and The Black Bream Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... had seen more particularly was an awful-looking crimson and grey spider as big as a soft-shell crab. He was squatting on a bone in one corner, glaring at her with his little evil eyes, and moving his horizontal mandibles as if he would dearly ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... the oafs who surrounded the object of his speculations, some lying flat, with elbows forward and chins to fist; some creeping and scrambling about her to get her notice, or fire her into a rage; some squatting at an easy distance with ribaldries to exchange. But there was one, sitting a little above her on the mound, who seemed to consider himself, in a sort, her proprietor. He was master of the pack, warily on the watch, able by position and strength to prevent what ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... had passed at the ford came to the bluff above the camp, and arranging themselves in a squatting posture, looked down upon Williamson's party with longing eyes, in expectation of a feast. They were a pitiable lot, almost naked, hungry and cadaverous. Indians are always hungry, but these poor creatures were particularly so, as their usual supply of food had grown very scarce ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... others,' was the reply. 'And is this all?' again asked Tsze-lu. The Master said, 'He cultivates himself so as to give rest to all the people. He cultivates himself so as to give rest to all the people:— even Yao and Shun were still solicitous about this.' CHAP. XLVI. Yuan Zang was squatting on ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... Guthrie, squatting on his haunches, feeling his bicycle tyres, turned up to him a face grown suddenly rutted and haggard as ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley |
