"Squat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... noontime, when there is no smoke rising and no stir of life, resembles nothing so much as a collection of prodigious wasps' nests. The huts are squat and brown and chimneyless, facing east, and the inhabitants have the faculty of quail for making themselves scarce in the underbrush at the approach of strangers. But they are really not often at home during midday, only ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... cinema star before I'd done with life. I hope she won't be all day raking a few girls together. She's not what you'd call quick. I've misjudged her. Here she comes with half a dozen at least—and, oh, no, Sheila! You don't mean to say you've brought candy? Well, you are a sport! Let's squat under the mimosa tree ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... likely, all together. Possibly some miserly old wretch lived there, needing only a little light to count up his hoard, and caring little for any intrusive wind, if it did not blow away his treasure. I fancied I could see him running over the tale of his coin by a feeble rushlight—squat, perhaps, on the dirty tile-floor—then locking his box, and placing it carefully under the pillow of his straw pallet, then tip-toeing to the door to examine again the fastening, then carefully extinguishing the taper, and after, dropping into an ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... you about. They've cut the 'phone down to the 'llano' as a start. But that's nothing. You just go and squat by the engine and see what happens. ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... scarce worth coal When they come to the thing called death; They squat on the coals with the real damned souls And listen with bated breath, To the tales of the earth, when the world was new, When a man had to fight for his own, When he took his wife at the risk of his life And killed ...
— Rhymes of a Roughneck • Pat O'Cotter
... pleasantly for me." The Queen's voice was measuredly polite. "I thank you for thinking of me—in my out-of-the-way corner, and bringing me such lovely gifts." Her eyes turned from the flowers which Brina had put in a squat pewter pitcher to the book which lay on the table. Then she turned to Robin and levelled a glance upon her which held ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... for it. Others hate it. If you are one of the former, select a propitious moment to suggest that you will cook, if the rest will wash the dishes and supply the wood and water. Thus you will get first crack at the fire in the chill of morning; and at night you can squat on your heels doing light ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... affectionate self" at the age of sixteen. An ancient easy chair and a queer old sofa still had the original, slippery, black horsehair off which Petro and Ena had slid as children. Petro had named the sofa "the whale," and the squat chair "the seal." Both shiny, slippery, black things really did resemble sea monsters, and had never lost ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... might as well love the Manitoba blizzard or try to quell the cyclone by looking calmly in its eye. The setting hen is filled with hatred for every living thing. She loves to brood over her wrongs or anything else she can find to squat on. ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... he drew a loud and elaborate plan of a very brilliant campaign. When he had finished, the blue-clothed men scattered into small arguing groups between the rows of squat brown huts. A negro teamster who had been dancing upon a cracker box with the hilarious encouragement of twoscore soldiers was deserted. He sat mournfully down. Smoke drifted lazily from a multitude ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... A Lisbon Dandy.—A small, squat, puffy figure incased within a large pack-saddle, upon the back of a lean, high-boned, straw-fed, cream-coloured nag, with an enormously flowing tail, whose length and breadth would appear to be each night ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... the mosque, and I just took in that he was a fine venerable fellow with an important beard, with a look of wisdom and experience in his steady glance from under the strong arches of his eyebrows that made me wish I knew Arabic, and could squat beside him, and gossip of the wide world. As I turned ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... glade was a fence, of the old stake-and-rider type, though little of it was to be seen, so thickly was it overgrown by wild blackberry bushes, scrubby oaks and young madrono trees. In the rear, a gate through a low paling fence led to a snug, squat bungalow, built in the California Spanish style and seeming to have been compounded directly from the landscape of which it was so justly a part. Neat and trim and modestly sweet was the bungalow, redolent of comfort and repose, telling with quiet certitude of ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... and its darkness, its lines of tall trees and low houses, its broad grey footwalks, speckled with the shadows of overhanging branches, and parted occasionally by the gloomy gaps of side streets. The squat yellow flames of the gas lamps, standing erect at regular intervals, alone imparted a little life to the lonely wilderness. And Florent seemed to make no progress; the avenue appeared to grow ever longer ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... 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 ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... inside the house, he'll squat, And drive his rods on high, Till twirls his sudden sooty brush Against the ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... got to play educated games now," Pearl had said, when she started them at this one. "'Bull-in-the-ring,' 'squat-tag,' 'button, button, who's got the button?' are all right for kids that don't have to rise in the world, but with you lads it's different. Ye've got to make yer games count. When I get to ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... spirits, sylphs, there be, And fays the wind blows often here; The gnomes that squat the ceiling near, In corners made by old books dim; The long-backed dwarfs, those goblins grim That seem at home 'mong vases rare, And chat to them with friendly air— Oh, how the joyous demon throng Must all have laughed with laughter long To see you on my rough drafts fall, My ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... for the meal, the inmates of the house squat down upon the floor, the husband with his wife and children apart, male visitors and the unmarried portion of the house eating together. Slaves eat when all have finished, and get what is ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... into the firmament, range after range of blue and snow-capped mountains. I was bewildered and amazed, having heard nothing of this great beauty. The town when entered is quite eastern. The streets are formed of open stalls under the first story, in which squat tailors, cooks, sherbet vendors and the like, busy at their work or smoking narghilehs. Cloths stretched from house to house keep out the sun. Mules rattle through the crowd; curs yelp between your legs; negroes are as hideous and bright clothed as usual; grave Turks with long ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... His shadow was Bruce, an Edinburgh University man, metaphysical, argumentative, persistent, devoted to The Duke. Indeed, his chief ambition was to attain to The Duke's high and lordly manner; but, inasmuch as he was rather squat in figure and had an open, good-natured face and a Scotch voice of the hard and rasping kind, his attempts at imitation were not conspicuously successful. Every mail that reached Swan Creek brought ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... if you greatly prefer going into the dome, go. Now your general glance gives you picturesque stretches of gleaming water, on your left, with a sail here and there and a lunatic asylum on shore; over beyond the water, on a distant elevation, you see a squat yellow temple which your eye dwells upon lovingly through a blur of unmanly moisture, for it recalls your lost boyhood and the Parthenons done in molasses candy which made it blest and beautiful. Still in the distance, but on this ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... Till thy hoarse tongue lolleth out! Bloat thy cheeks, and bulge thine eyes Unto bursting; pelt thy thighs With thy swollen palms, and roar As thou never hast before! Lustier! Wilt thou! Peal on peal! Stiflest? Squat and grind thy heel— Wrestle with thy loins, and then Wheeze thee whiles, and ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... an entry from my journal.—"The bazaar held here is most original. Long rows of thatched open sheds, about six feet high, form a street; in these sheds the dealers squat with their various wares exposed on the ground before them. In one, are Manchester goods, the calicoes are printed in England, with the name of the Greek merchant to whom they are consigned; in another, is a curious ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... settles by the fire, one on either side of it, with a corresponding table before each. On one of these tables, the eight volumes were ranged flat, in a row, like a galvanic battery; on the other, certain squat case-bottles of inviting appearance seemed to stand on tiptoe to exchange glances with Mr Wegg over a front row of tumblers and a basin of white sugar. On the hob, a kettle steamed; on the hearth, a cat reposed. Facing the fire between the settles, a sofa, a footstool, and a little ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... "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
... name the man was much too polite to express this opinion aloud. He merely said, "Well, Dick, you know that you're welcome to squat here as long or as short a time as you like, an' use the best o' my horses, if so disposed, or do the postboy business on Black Polly. Do as ye like wi' me an' mine, boy, for it's only fair to say that but for your help this day ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... brood till the rest come out and enable the whole to start in quest of food. I have several times seen newly-hatched young in charge of the cock, who made a very good attempt at appearing lame in the plover fashion, in order to draw off the attention of pursuers. The young squat down and remain immovable when too small to run far, but attain a wonderful degree of speed when about the size of common fowls. It can not be asserted that ostriches are polygamous, though they often appear to be so. When caught they are easily tamed, but ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... the Hankow picked up the raft which it would tow all the way up to Ching-Fu. Upon this raft was a long, squat cabin, in and out of which poured incessantly members of China's ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... short and squat, She had money and he had not So off to her he resolved to go, And play her a ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... the next headland, beyond which it turned inland again to Lanyon and rejoined the main road to Rose Head. The church itself had no architectural distinction; but the solitary position, the churchyard walls sometimes washed by high spring tides, the squat tower built into the rounded grassy cliff that protected it from the direct attack of the sea, and its impressive antiquity combined to give it more than the finest architecture could give. Nowhere in the surrounding landscape was there a sign of human habitation, neither on the road down ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... Doublings, will be like that. When she is thus reduced to the slights and shifts she makes by Doublings and Windings, give your Dogs Time and Place enough to cast about your Rings, for unwinding the same; and observe her leaps and skips before she squat, and beat curiously all likely places of Harbour: She is soon ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... two millions and a half in number; and these appear to constitute about two-fifths of the whole population of Mexico. They bear a general resemblance to the Indians of Canada, Florida, Peru, and Brazil: they have a similar swarthy and copper-coloured skin, smooth hair, little beard, squat body, long eyes, with the corners directed upward towards the temples, prominent cheek bones, and thick lips. There is a great diversity in their language, but they appear to have been all descendants from the same ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... came running down among the black-boled trees, a strange, squat, gnomelike man whose gait was as uncouth as his dwarfish figure. He held something in his two hands as he ran, and when he came near he threw this thing with a swift movement up before him, but he did not pause in ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... 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 ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... aside and fell upon the Government's forest policy, and Sam Gregg, a squat, wide-mouthed, harsh-voiced individual, cursed the action of Ross Cavanagh the ranger in the district above the Fork. "He thinks he's Secretary of War, but I reckon he won't after I interview him. He can't shuffle my sheep around over the hills at ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... this savage desert, inhumanly silent except for the shrieking of shells, for now more than a year's time France has struggled with the incarnated spirit of evil, rearing its head again, armed with all the enginery of modern science. The little, dirty-bearded soldiers squat there in their burrows, white-faced, tense, silent, waiting, watching, month after month, or plunge over their walls to give their lives on that death-field outside. They are the simple martyrs ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... throo; Aw've been twirling abaght like a worm, An' th' blankets gate felter'd, lass, too— Tha niver saw cloas i' sich form. Aw'll tell thee what 't all wor abaght— But promise tha'll keep it reight squat, For aw wodn't for th' world let it aght; But aw can't keep it in—tha knows that. We'd a meetin at the schooil yesterneet, An' Jimmy wor thear,—tha's seen Jim? An' he hutch'd cloise to me in a bit, To ax me for th' number o'th' hymn; Aw thowt ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, First Series - To Which Is Added The Cream Of Wit And Humour From His Popular Writings • John Hartley
... it is wreathed with women, scores squat upon their mats on the pave, their goods spread before the ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... still high when Zarwell left the analyst's office. The white marble of the city's buildings shimmered in the afternoon heat, squat and austere as giant tree trunks, pock-marked and gray-mottled with windows. Zarwell was careful not to rest his hand on the flesh ...
— Monkey On His Back • Charles V. De Vet
... were invited to the private view of it the night before, when the faithful were dedicating it. They sat on the floor, these Mohammedans, rocking themselves back and forth, and chanting the Koran. I believe the reason nearly all Arabs have crooked legs is because they squat so much. One cannot have straight legs when one uses one's legs to sit down on for hours at a time. They always sit in the sun, too, and that must bake ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... at the squat, white house, which in truth looked the reverse of hospitable; but the prospect of a fire being all-powerful at the moment, they turned obediently, and made their way up a worn gravel path, leading to the shabbiest of ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... is often only in 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 be unearthed. Higher still the voice expresses ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... to squat round the fire, smoking tobacco and quaffing with evident pleasure the small glasses of usquebaugh which Dick bestowed upon them. Armitage objected, however, to the ...
— Adventures in the Far West • W.H.G. Kingston
... Charley is squat of figure, short neck, popeyed, and has white hair. He tills the two acres and produces garden truck that he finds a sale for among the employees of the Winnsboro mills, just across the railroad from his home. He likes to talk, and pricks up his ears,(so to speak), whenever anything is ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... twisted you into it and twisted you out of it, to the right, to the left, opposite, under here, over there, in the dark, in the dirt, by the gateway, archway, covered way, dry way, wet way, fosse, portcullis, drawbridge, sluice, squat tower, pierced wall, and heavy battery, but likewise took a fortifying dive under the neighbouring country, and came to the surface three or four miles off, blowing out incomprehensible mounds and batteries among the quiet crops ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... full of roots or sprouts (a kind of rush). Sprush, spruce. Spunk, a match; a spark; fire, spirit. Spunkie, full of spirit. Spunkie, liquor, spirits. Spunkies, jack-o'-lanterns, will-o'-wisps. Spurtle-blade, the pot-stick. Squatter, to flap. Squattle, to squat; to settle. Stacher, to totter. Staggie, dim. of staig. Staig, a young horse. Stan', stand. Stane, stone. Stan't, stood. Stang, sting. Stank, a moat; a pond. Stap, to stop. Stapple, a stopper. Stark, strong. Starnies, dim. of starn, star. Starns, stars. Startle, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... It was a squat brick building with four windows that looked down on the pavement with a short-sighted stare. On each window was written in letters of white enamel, "Well-aired beds." A board nailed to a post by the side-door announced that tea and coffee were always ready. On the ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... lost. The reply came to me in a shrill falsetto. So grotesque was the effect of this treble from a bulk so squat and broad and hairy as the silhouette before me that I almost ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... him an interview till the next day. On paying the lady a visit, he was received by an ugly, dirtily-garbed old woman, though with a smiling countenance, who, at his request, furnished him eggs and milk. At length the sultana appeared—an old dame with a short, squat figure, a nose flabby at the end, and eyes destitute of brows or lashes, but blessed with a smiling face. Her dress consisted of an old barsati, dirtier even than her maid's. Her fingers were covered with rings of copper wire, and her legs staggered under an ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... the house came from a leaping, jolly fire in a big stone fire-place, and from half a dozen squat candles set in brackets around the walls. It was the one lovely room that Eric had ever seen. It was so large that he knew it must occupy the whole of the little house. But in spite of all the brightness, the comers were ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... in the camp, for the old Emir had mounted his camel, and some of his party were already beginning to follow their companions. The squat lieutenant, the Moolah, and about a dozen Dervishes surrounded the prisoners. They had not mounted their camels, for they were told off to be the ministers of death. The three men understood as they looked upon their faces that the sand was running ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... see in the cliff the long line of caves. As we enter the first an intolerable odour meets us, and a flight of bats explains the cause. Gradually our eyes accustom themselves to the light, and we become conscious of a square hall, the flat roof resting on squat pillars elaborately carved, fragments of painting on the walls and ceiling, narrow slits opening into dark cells, and opposite the entrance, set back in a shrine, a colossal Buddha, the light falling full on the solemn face, the upturned feet, the expository hands. ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... lay almost horizontally upon them, made one think of the 'stuck-on' head of a pheasant which is brought to the table regally adorned with its feathers. Not that she in the least degree resembled a pheasant, having been endowed by nature with a short and squat and masculine figure; but successive mortifications had given her a backward tilt, such as one may observe in trees which have taken root on the very edge of a precipice and are forced to grow backwards to preserve their balance. Since she was obliged, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... Gray was born and grew towards womanhood was one of a squat line of mean little houses that hid themselves behind a great church. The roadway in front of the houses led only to the back entrance of the church. Over against the windows was the playground of the church schools, surrounded ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... several smaller outbuildings, some squat and ancient-looking adobes, others newer frame buildings, all neatly whitewashed. And then the home itself. Quite as Helen had provisioned, there was a low wooden fence about the garden; over the gateway were tangled ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... short snub nose goes with an 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 ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... friend Mr. H. Festing Jones and I have had the good fortune to meet; he is an engineer now, and does not know one note from another; he has quite lost his deafness, is married, and is, of course, a little squat man with the same refractory hair that he always had. It was very interesting to watch him, and Jones remarked that before the end of dinner he had become positively posthumous. One morning I was told the ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... a pensive tone, as if the question had aroused some sorrowful recollections; "I can't say that I'd like to settle here now. There was a time when I thought nothin' could be better than to squat in the woods with one or two jolly comrades, and—"(Jacques sighed); "but times is changed now, master, and so is my mind. My chums are most of them dead or gone one way or other. No; I shouldn't care to ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... Captain Woodward, 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 ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... five horses. Balaam led on Pedro, his squat figure stiff in the saddle, but solid as a rock, and tilted a little forward, as his habit was. One of the Judge's horses came next, a sorrel, dragging back continually on the rope by which he was led. After him ambled Balaam's wise pack-animal, ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... stream of water, and in its pleasure in rolling in the dust. The same strong dislike to cross a stream is common to the camel which has been domesticated from a very early period. Young pigs, though so tame, sometimes squat when frightened, and then try to conceal themselves, even in an open and bare place. Young turkeys, and occasionally even young fowls, when the hen gives the danger-cry, run away and try to hide themselves, like young partridges or pheasants, in order that their mother may take flight, ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... dwelling-houses, were all open, exposing each domestic arrangement to the public. The floors of these country houses are slightly raised from the ground, say one step, and covered with neat straw carpeting, upon which the family and visitors "squat" and take ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... two placed us, without further trouble, alongside the wharf, amongst some magnificent clipper ships of Messrs. Henderson's and the New Zealand Shipping Co.'s, who seemed to turn up their splendid noses at the squat, dumpy, antiquated old serving-mallet that dared to mingle with so august a crowd. There had been a time, not so very far back, when I should have shared their apparent contempt for our homely old tub; but my voyage had taught me, among other things, that, as far as true comfort went at ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... dog is that he is the same old dog. Not an inch has the rascal advanced along the line of evolution. We have ceased to squat upon our naked haunches and gnaw raw bones, but this companion of the childhood of the race, this vestigial remnant of juventus mundi this dismal anachronism, this veteran inharmony of the scheme ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... every instant. Johnson waited, drumming his fingers on his knees, in a high, dim lit room, the air of which was charged with a faint, sickly smell of ether. The furniture was massive, and the books in the shelves were sombre, and a squat black clock ticked mournfully on the mantelpiece. It told him that it was half-past seven, and that he had been gone an hour and a quarter. Whatever would the women think of him! Every time that a distant door slammed he sprang from his chair in a quiver of eagerness. ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... have christened "Topsy," and I only wish you could see her when she is in one of her tantrums, which she has at frequent intervals. With her flashing black eyes, straight, jet-black hair, square, squat shoulders, she looks the very embodiment of the Evil One. She is twelve, but shows neither ability nor desire to learn. Her habits are disgusting, and unless closely watched she will be found filling her pockets with the contents ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... squat river boat which had been captured from the Turks took us on board. It burned oil fuel. A single canvas awning with many gaps in it covered the upper deck. The lower deck was nearly taken up by engine and boiler, save for a small saloon aft, and water tanks ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... 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 ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... the colony of low, square-shaped enclosures and to its far side where the twisted jungle began; to the spot where the mentacom was housed in a squat, guarded dome of crudely-shaped steel. Then he turned back to the Earthman, and Mason saw the uncertainty ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... of jagged stumps and ploughed earth; against the yellow sky, the yellow glare of guns that squat like toads in a tangle of wire and piles of brass shell-cases and split wooden boxes. Long rutted roads littered with shell-cases stretching through the wrecked woods in the yellow light; strung alongside of them, tangled masses of telephone wires. Torn camouflage fluttering greenish-grey ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... also "iron tag," "stone tag," and "tree tag." They are all simply the game of tag with the additional rule that when a player is in contact with iron, stone, trees, wood, and so on he is safe from being tagged by the one who is "it." The game of "squat tag" is similar, except that to be safe the one pursued must squat quickly on the ground before "it" catches him. In cross tag, "it" must select a victim and continue to run after him until some one runs ahead and crosses his path, when "it," ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... commanded on this occasion by a little squat figure, all belly, with a short pair of legs at one end, and a little red, fiery face, that looked as if it would explode—at the other. The figure was mounted on horseback, and as it and its party gallantly entered this city of cabins, it clapped its hands ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... a glass of sherry, then, and let him squat on the cot. Now, Kim,' continued Father Victor, 'no one is going to hurt you. Drink that down and tell us about yourself. The truth, if ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... buildings lay a little to the rear, as though the trees stood sentinel between them and the prairies. The house was of round straight logs; the shingles of the squat roof were cupped and blistered with the suns of many summers. Refuse loitered about the open door; many empty tins; a leaky barrel, with missing hoops; boxes, harness, tangled bits of wire. Once there had been a fence; a sort of picket fence of little saplings, but ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... part; the nose is small and naked at its extremity; the forehead very large and convex; the eyes are small; the ears short, wide between and rounded at the ends; neck thick and very strong; the body is squat and massive; the tail is so short as to be hardly distinguishable. The feet are short, very large, nearly of the same length, terminated by five toes very large and with rounded ends, the general conformation of which recalls in all respects those of the bears, but of which the lower parts, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... with ill-restrained hatred at his fierce guards. They squat on the steps and eye him viciously. He is under the muzzle of his own pistol. It is ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... the stirring crowds, you come to the poi merchants, squatting in the shade on their hams, in true native fashion, and surrounded by purchasers. (The Sandwich Islanders always squat on their hams, and who knows but they may be the old original "ham sandwiches?" The thought is pregnant with interest.) The poi looks like common flour paste, and is kept in large bowls formed of a species of gourd, and capable of holding from ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... new land in a can of beer," cried Biarne, pouring the beverage out of an earthenware jar into a squat old Norse flagon of ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... upon the grass, or wandered lazily through the village, sporting with the Chinamen, or chaffing the Indian idling in the sun—a garish figure stoically watching the inroads of civilisation. The town itself was squat but amiable: small houses and large huts; the only place of note and dignity, the new town hall, which was greatly overshadowed by the big mill, and even by the two smaller ones flanking ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that perhaps the elephants might come by first, and then contradicted himself as he felt convinced that it would be the sentry; and as he peered forth from the hole, with the cold chill of despair increasing, there, far down the path, came the squat figure, with the light playing upon the ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... 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 landlord, and most skillfully threw him. The falling sword ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... whole boundless continent might be theirs. They had badgered France out of Louisiana, and they would badger England out of Canada and the West Indies. In New York and Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore, it was customary to talk of walking into Canada and squat a conquest, as was afterwards carried into effect with regard to Texas. Mr. Dunn, the President of the Canadian government, looked upon the state of feeling in the adjoining republic with suspicion. He conceived it expedient ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... she used to squat herself under a couch and make all her servants lie above, one upon the other, so that if the thunderbolt fell, it might have its effect upon them before penetrating to her. She had ruined herself and her husband, though they were ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... presided, under Bird, over both establishments. In my time, Mr. Cook, now or lately a respectable singer and performer at Drury-Lane Theatre, and nephew to Mr. Bird, had succeeded to him. I well remember Bird. He was a squat, corpulent, middle-sized man, with something of the gentleman about him, and that peculiar mild tone—especially while he was inflicting punishment—which is so much more terrible to children than the angriest looks and gestures. Whippings were not frequent; but when they took place, the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... my master, was now on a journey to Meshed, the object of which was to purchase the lamb-skins of Bokhara, which he afterwards purposed to convey to Constantinople for sale. Imagine a short squat man, with a large head, prominent spongy nose, and a thick, black beard, and you will see my fellow traveller. He was a good Mussulman, very strict in his devotions, and never failed to pull off his stockings, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... the top of the little rising where the lane climbed up into a curve of wild-rose hedge and honeysuckle which almost hid the actual road from view. He was not a prepossessing object in the landscape; short and squat, unkempt and dirty, and clad in rough garments which were almost past hanging together, he looked about as uncouth and ugly a customer as one might expect to meet anywhere on a lonely road at nightfall. He carried a large basket on his back, seemingly full ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... with a chair between Sir Reginald and the professor, the former being flanked by Lethbridge (Mildmay, in accordance with previous arrangements, had ensconced himself in the pilothouse); Lualamba and the rest of the suite were quietly allowed to squat in a semicircle ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... mountainside, overlooking a valley so deep and wide as to daze the brain of the gazing human, stands a squat building. It seems to have been crushed into the slope by the driving force of the vicious mountain storms to which it is open on three sides. There is no shelter for it. It stands out bravely to sunshine and storm alike with the contemptuous ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... 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 ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... ceased to think of them as marvels. There is a photographer established in every considerable village,—nay, one may not unfrequently see a photographic ambulance standing at the wayside upon some vacant lot where it can squat unchallenged in the midst of burdock and plantain and apple-Peru, or making a long halt in the middle of a common by special permission of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... the pass. More often he tied his horse and took the steep rough trail afoot. The way was guarded by strange, distorted trees, and rocks carved into fantastic shapes. Some of them were piled high like temples. Others, round and squat, resembled the fat and obscene deities of Eastern religions. There were seals and elephants and crocodiles and allegorical monsters, some of them as tiny as the grotesque Japanese carvings, others as stupendous as Egypt. The trail led by them, among them, between them. At their feet ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... as the aunt of the wretched girl in the fairy tale might have done,—the girl out of whose mouth a frog jumped every time she opened it. Indeed, the sentence seemed actually visible between them, like a squat and ugly small beast on the shining white cloth. "Sorry, Aunt Lyddy," said Jane, penitently. "I'm a crosspatch to-night, and I ought to sit by the fire and spin, ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... hearty greeting was that of a man who had not a care in the world. His visitor's description was writ large on him by the sea. No one could possibly mistake Captain Coke for any other species of captain than that of master mariner. He was built on the lines of a capstan, short and squat and powerful. Though the weather was hot, he wore a suit of thick navy-blue serge that would have served his needs within the Arctic Circle. It clung tightly to his rounded contours; there was a purple line on his red brows that marked the exceeding tightness of ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... Every day eight or ten Koraks, armed with 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 ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... 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, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... down the Old Wharf that jutted out into the harbour, a faint wind blowing off the water ruffled under Fenella's hat, and she put up her hand to keep it on. It was dark on the Old Wharf, very dark; the wool sheds, the cattle trucks, the cranes standing up so high, the little squat railway engine, all seemed carved out of solid darkness. Here and there on a rounded wood-pile, that was like the stalk of a huge black mushroom, there hung a lantern, but it seemed afraid to unfurl its ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... Cairo. The worst point of these worthies was, that they prevented, for their own reasons, the natives working for us; while they preferred eternal chatter and squabbles to working themselves. So the Greek element was reduced to George the cook, a short, squat, unwashed fellow, who looked like a fair-Hercules out of luck; who worked like three, and who loudly clamoured for a revolver and a bowie-knife. His main fault, professionally speaking, was that he literally drenched us with oil till the store happily ran out. His complexion was ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... no such thing as blindness!" said the women, thrusting their heads out of window. "But then, of course, he's from the country. And now he's going to deliver his work. Lord, how long is he going to squat up there and earn bread for that sweater? The red'll soon go from his cheeks if he stops there much longer!" And ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... a start to find the door open, framing the squat figure of a man-servant, a brigand in appearance, French of the Midi; black hair grew low on his forehead; his beetling brows met over sullen shiny eyes which scanned her with a hostile gaze. Diffidently ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... hands, and gave no trouble. My father was a kind master, and we always felt that, in case of need, we could rely upon them just as upon ourselves. In those days it was next to impossible to get hired hands for, as there was plenty of land for anyone to squat upon, comparatively close to the port, the men who came out generally set up for themselves, ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... man of the tribe, and, if the platform be large enough, also the parents of the pair, go up and squat down in the rear. The bride and bridegroom also squat down facing each other, and the old man comes forward and knocks their heads together. I was told at Subig that only the bride and groom mount the platform and seat themselves for a talk, ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... the greenery, bold and white, shone the buildings of Mombasa; and after a little while we saw an inland glitter that represented her narrow, deep bay, the stern of a wreck against the low, green cliffs, and strange, fat-trunked squat trees without leaves. Straight past all this we glided at half speed, then turned sharp to the right to enter a long wide expanse like a river, with green banks, twenty feet or so in height, grown thickly with the tall cocoanut palms. These gave way ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... a single row of egregious dwellings, squat, uncouth, stretching away on either side of the veranda-fronted store and "gambling hell" which formed a sort of center-piece around which revolved the whole life of the village. It was a poor, mean place, shapeless, evil-smelling in ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... near the window, looking out upon the square, and upon the vast, squat, Egyptian, tomb-like structure, that rose out of the centre of the smooth, snow-covered plat, across which the sun streamed with ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... one side they are piled up so the foreign guests of honor may sit instead of kneeling Japanese fashion. We place ourselves after having all the guests one after another brought up. We shake hands because their bows are rather impossible and they have adapted themselves to our way. Then we all squat again. Then the pretty waitresses come slithering across the floor, each with a tiny table in her hands. The first is for Papa, the second for me, then the mayor, and so on. The mayor is down at the end of the line. After each one has his table before him the mayor comes to the center ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... with a shining face; "and mind you be as quiet and mute as mice at a cat's wedding while I am telling my story, or I'll"—His threat was drowned in the joyous shouts of the children as they scrambled into their chairs. When they had all put on a listening look, he poured out a little yellow, squat, Dutch mug brimful of rich brown cider from a big blue pitcher that Black Daddy had just placed on a table close at hand, and, having wet his whistle therewith, began his story. And now and then, as the story went on, the fire, keeping its bright, watchful eye upon the old gentleman, would ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... comforts. And age having despoiled me of some of these, I sharpen my appetite for those remaining. Glory, which Pliny and Cicero propose to us, is far from my thoughts. "Glory and rest are things that cannot squat on the same bench." Stay your mind in assured and limited cogitations, wherein it best may please itself, and having gained knowledge of true felicities, enjoy them, and rest satisfied without wishing a further continuance either of life or ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... 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 of their ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... short, squat, enormously powerful wheels; between, and joining them, a roughly hewn pole and various chains in an apparently hopeless tangle. Yet see them in work—every niche doing its work, every chain taking ten per cent, more strain than it was ever intended ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... of Tatiana's civilization were but too visible in her gown of yellow print flounced to the waist and with a tight-fitting bodice. The peasant costume suits the dance far better. Her partner was unworthy of her, and did not perform the squat-and-leap step in proper form. She needed Fomitch, the butler, who had been obliged to stay at home and serve tea; to his regret, no doubt, since we were informed that "he danced as though he had ten devils in his body." As we saw no prospect of any devils at all,—and ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... time. The clock in the dairy told him that it was five minutes to five but, as he turned away, he heard a clock somewhere near him, but unseen, beating eleven strokes in swift precision. He laughed as he heard it for it made him think of McCann, and he saw him a squat figure in a shooting jacket and breeches and with a fair goatee, standing in the wind at Hopkins' ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... Dickie never would be taken away—and still more charming, to the clock, which clanged a tremendous 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 ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... OF CAPTURING DUCKS.—On the American rivers, the modes of capture are various. Sometimes half a dozen artificial birds are fastened to a little raft, and which is so weighted that the sham birds squat naturally on the water. This is quite sufficient to attract the notice of a passing flock, who descend to cultivate the acquaintance of the isolated few when the concealed hunter, with his fowling-piece, scatters a deadly leaden shower amongst them. In the winter, when the water is covered ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... customs, dress, food, and religious ceremonies continually furnishing matter of intense and varied interest. I noticed, especially, how little the men and women went about together, riding or walking, or to church. Neither do they sit together, or rather should say "squat," for, even in the fine churches, the women squatted in the center aisles, while the men were ranged in side aisles. There are few pews, and these few, rarely occupied, were straight and uncomfortable. No effort was ever made to make them ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... to-day the Chinese city, or the older outer city. Kublai Khan, Genghis's grandson, fixed his residence definitively in Peking in 1264, and began building the Ta-tu, or Great Residence—the Tartar city of to-day. The Chinese city is oblong; the Tartar city is squat and square and overlaps and dominates the northern walls of the older city. Kublai Khan, by building the Tartar city on the northern edge of the Chinese city and fortifying it with immense strength, may be said to have fitted the spear-head on to the Chinese shaft, and to have ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... Susan, I think," he said pleasantly, shaking hands with the squat little figure in front of him, "I remember ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... squat in council round the fire, sending on three dromedary-riders to crown a hill commanding the pass. The "burning question" is now whether armed clansmen are or are not ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... a tree, a beaver usually paused and appeared to look at its surroundings as if choosing a place to squat or sit while cutting it down; but so far as I could tell, he gave no thought as to the direction in which the tree was going to fall. This is true of every beaver which I have seen begin cutting, and I have seen scores. But beavers ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... faithfully to the man I sent for them. The man was about five feet two inches high, and well made; his colour of a light copper; his hair black and short, and with little beard. He had two holes in his under-lip, but no ornaments in them. The woman was short and squat, with a plump round face; wore a deer-skin jacket, with a large hood, and had on wide boots. The teeth of both were black, and seemed as if they had been filed down level with the gums. The woman was punctured from the lip ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... high-pitched drone of the priests, the low murmur of prayers, the rippling laughter of girls, the harsh voices of men, and the general buzz of a multitude. There is very much that is highly grotesque at first sight. Men squat on the floor selling amulets, rosaries, printed prayers, incense sticks, and other wares. Ex votos of all kinds hang on the wall and on the great round pillars. Many of these are rude Japanese pictures. ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... 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, small enough to be numerous. ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... converses with trees who foretell the future to him; he drinks from the fountain of youth; he gets into a glass barrel lighted by lamps, and is let down to the bottom of the sea, where he watches the gambols of marine monsters; his army is attacked by wild beasts unaffrighted by flames, that squat in the midst of the fires intended to scare them away. He places the corpse of the admiral who commanded at Babylon in an iron coffin, that four loadstones hold to the vault. The authors give their imagination ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... guttural, and she pronounced English with a strong German accent, although she had no German blood in her veins and had never been in Germany. The little Bolshevik, who had the face of a Russian peasant, candid eyes and a squat figure, listened with an air of profound and somehow innocent attention. She possessed neither morals nor manners, denied the existence of God, and wished to pull the whole fabric of European civilization to pieces. Her small brain was obsessed by a desire ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... little train that runs to my new-found Paradise, rocking and puffing and grumbling along on its narrow-gauge track with its cars labelled like grown-up ones, first, second, and third class; and no two painted the same colour; and its noisy, squat engine like the real ones in the toy-stores, that wind up with a key and go rushing off frantically in tangents. No wonder the train to my lost village is called "Le petit deraillard"—"The little get-off-the-track." And ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... baby, bursting out into loud boohooing the first time he was presented to the Emperor, and showing himself very immature in various ways. Curiously enough, when he was taken to the cadet school he was found to be unable to walk for any considerable distance. He had always been made to squat and be carried, and the first thing to be done toward making him a Russian officer was to train him in using his legs. He took an especial fancy to bicycles: in the park attached to the cadet school he became very proficient in the use of them; and, returning to Bokhara at his first ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... don't shout all over the place what your business is with him," ordered the previous speaker sulkily. Lute Blackwell, a squat heavily muscled man of forty, had the manner of a bully. Unless his shifty eyes lied he was ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... other words accented on the last syllable, when they end with a single consonant, preceded by a single vowel, or by a vowel after qu, double their final letter before a suffix beginning with a vowel: as, rob ed robbed; fop ish foppish; squat er squatter; prefer' ing ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... exclaimed Eric. He vaulted out of the carriage, and flung his arms round Marjorie's little squat figure, lifting her off the ground, and squeezing her in an ecstasy of delight. "Here I am, Mag, and there are two pouters in a cage, and four new fantails—they're coming with the luggage—and I've got a lop-eared ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... rein beside him. Kate Cumberland shifted her weight a little to one side of the saddle to rest and looked down from the crest on the sweep of country below. A mile away the railroad made a streak of silver light across the brown range and directly before them stood the squat station-house with red-tiled roof. Just before the house, a slightly broader streak of that gleaming light showed the position of the siding rails. She turned her head towards the outlaws. They were listening to the final directions of their chief, and the darkly intent ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... 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, ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... the shanitor, Mr. Sdanwell?" inquired an affable voice through the doorway; and Stanwell, turning with a laugh, confronted the squat figure of a middle-aged man in an expensive fur coat, who looked as if his face secreted the oil which he used ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... can have looked like anything but a bundle of sticks," Murchard had once said of him. "Or a phosphorescent log, rather," some one else amended; and we recognized the happiness of this description of his small squat trunk, with the red blink of the eyes in a face like mottled bark. He had always been possessed of a leisure which he had nursed and protected, instead of squandering it in vain activities. His carefully guarded ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... operas, theaters and balls, for they are young. They have plenty of society, real society, not the ill-assorted collection of a predetermined number of bodies, that blindly assumes that name, but the rich communication of various and fertile minds; they very, very seldom consent to squat four mortal hours on one chair (like old hares stiffening in their hot forms), and nibbling, sipping and twaddling in four mortal hours what could have been eaten, drunken and said in thirty-five minutes. They are both artists at heart, and it shocks their natures to see folks mix so very largely ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... waters are low, forcing the engines of screw propellers lets the stern of the boat "squat" or hug the bottom, and although these are minor features of want of mechanical adaptation to canal duty, they illustrate petty detentions serving to lengthen ...
— History of Steam on the Erie Canal • Anonymous
... with a bored, pale face, was listlessly gazing through a lorgnette down at the droning, chewing, swarming crowd. Among the red, white, blue and straw-coloured feminine dresses the uniform figures of the men resembled large, squat, black beetles. Rovinskaya negligently, yet at the same time intently as well, was looking down upon the stand and the spectators, and her face expressed fatigue, ennui, and perhaps also that satiation ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... perfectly still, 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
... nuncks was a vile bore; and the sacrilegious declaration gave great offence to the diminutive gentleman aforesaid, who hesitated not in pronouncing Timothy Surety destitute of taste and vertu; to which accusation Timothy, rearing his squat form to its utmost altitude, indignantly replied, "that there was not an alderman in the City of London of better taste than himself in the qualities of callipash and callipee, and that if the little gemmen presumed again to asperse his ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... high heels; but they were freer to tack, go about, and run before the wind than I; for some one was sure to stick to each of them like a bur and steer him to some definite place, where he could squat and afterward take advantage of the right of preemption, while I was forced to ferret out a particular square mile of this boundless prairie, and there settle down, no matter how far it might be from water, neighbors, timber ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... Chatham Road. To the left of it was the residence of Mr. Samuel Doppelbrau, secretary of an excellent firm of bathroom-fixture jobbers. His was a comfortable house with no architectural manners whatever; a large wooden box with a squat tower, a broad porch, and glossy paint yellow as a yolk. Babbitt disapproved of Mr. and Mrs. Doppelbrau as "Bohemian." From their house came midnight music and obscene laughter; there were neighborhood rumors of ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... as a redoubtable if not ominous figure. He was a head taller than either Sam or Penrod; head and shoulders taller than Herman, who was short for his age; and Verman could hardly be used for purposes of comparison at all, being a mere squat brown spot, not yet quite nine years on this planet. And to Sam's mind, the aspect of Mr. Collins realized Penrod's portentous foreshadowings. Upon the fat face there was an expression of truculent intolerance which had been ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... 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, ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... the charred trunks lying all askew as they fell. The unlovely confusion of the uncompleted task was somewhat concealed by a rank growth of weeds and grass. This half-hearted attack upon the forest had let the sunlight in. It blazed full upon a cabin in the center of the clearing, a square, squat structure of logs with a roof of poles and dirt. A door and a window faced the creek, a window of tiny panes, a door that stood partly open, sagging forlornly upon ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... ignominious avenue of approach, Mr. Crisparkle repaired, awaiting the arrival of a short, squat omnibus, with a disproportionate heap of luggage on the roof—like a little Elephant with infinitely too much Castle—which was then the daily service between Cloisterham and external mankind. As this vehicle lumbered up, Mr. Crisparkle could hardly see anything else of it for a large ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... grassy ledge and looked out across the lichen-covered roofs and squat, rugged church tower of Tarn Regis; and pictures rose in my mind, pictures to some extent inspired, perhaps, by scraps I had read of learned essays written by my father. He had loved this ancient ground; he had been used ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... through me like a dash of spray in a winter v'y'ge." He stamped with his foot and roared out, "Forrard there: Two glasses and a dipper from the rundlet," at the same time opening a locker and taking therefrom a squat bottle. "'T is enough to make a man bowse himself kissing black Betty to think of being under ground." He held the black bottle firmly, as if it were in fact a sailor's life preserver from such a fate, and hastened, so soon as the cabin-boy appeared with the glasses and dipper, to mix two glasses ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... and soon got up near enough to see that the bears were sitting as close as they could pack, in a large circle round the real, veritable North Pole, and that those who were moving were merely stragglers, who could not find room to squat down with the rest. I was standing contemplating the strange scene, when an immensely big fellow, catching sight of me, came waddling up on his hind legs, and growling terrifically with anger. 'This is inhospitable conduct, Mr Bruin, let ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... skyline of lower Manhattan lifting its gray shafts through wet streamers of fog; she saw flotillas of squat ferry-boats shouldering their ways against the sullen heave of the river's tide-water; she heard the discordant shriek of their steam throats; she saw the tilting swoop of a hundred gulls, buffeting the wind; but she was conscious ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... skulk off, whenever they think the latter has any intention to attack them. This, however, is seldom the case, as the prairie hunter does not care to waste a bullet upon them; and they are often permitted to follow, and squat themselves unmolested around the hunter's camp, within reach of ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... gravely, putting his right hand first to his heart, next to his forehead, and then kissing the two foremost fingers laid across his lips, we replying as best we could with a bowing and scraping. These formalities concluded, the Don and the old Moor walk apart, and we squat down again to ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... is a dancing girl, only partly draped, balancing a sword on her head, while a brilliant green veil flies from head and face. Other Oriental women squat upon the floor watching her with a half indolent expression, while their Oriental masters and their friends sit in pomp at one side, absorbed in the dance and in the girl. The expressions upon all the faces are excellent and, the jewelled light that falls upon the group, the rich ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... with what strangely deeper feeling of the infinite variety of human nature, do we follow their converse throughout! Yet Quixote and Sancho are not more life-like and human, nor nearer together at one point and farther apart at another, than are Walter Shandy and his brother. The squat little Spanish peasant is not more gloriously incapable of following the chivalric vagaries of his master than the simple soldier is of grasping the philosophic crotchets of his brother. Both couples are in sympathetic contact absolute and complete at one point; at another they are "poles ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... eyes are laughing, Billy, and a ribald song you sing, While the old men sit and tell us war it is a ghastly thing, When the swift machines are busy and the grim, squat fortress nocks At your bolts as vain as eggs of gulls ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... yet he knew nothing of the realities of industrialism. He saw only the beauty of the great chimneys that rose against the sullen smoke-barred sunsets, and he felt only the romance of the lurid shuddering flares that burst out from squat stacks of brickwork and lit the emptiness of ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... thought that, they made a great mistake. To be sure, at anything except digging he was slow and awkward. He was too heavy and squat to be spry on his feet—to chase and catch his more nimble neighbors. But no one that knew much about Benny Badger would have said that his wits were dull. They were sharp. And so, too, were his teeth, which he never hesitated to ...
— The Tale of Benny Badger • Arthur Scott Bailey
... open, and from the smoking-car drifts back a visible blue line of stinging tobacco smoke, and with it a crackle of laughter over the story which the young man in the bright blue suit and lavender tie and light yellow shoes has just told to the squat man ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... an impression of many eyes, of a dense crew of squat bodies, of long, many-jointed limbs hauling at their mooring ropes to bring the thing down upon him. For a space he stared up, reining in his prancing horse with the instinct born of years of horsemanship. Then the flat of a sword ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... unequal massive towers of St. Mary's Church soared aloft into the ethereal radiance of the air, very black on their shaded sides, glowing with a soft phosphorescent sheen on the others. In the distance the Florian Gate, thick and squat under its pointed roof, barred the street with the square shoulders of the old city wall. In the narrow, brilliantly pale vista of bluish flagstones and silvery fronts of houses, its black archway stood out small and ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... were right aft, and here there was a small clear space of deck in which lay a hatch. This he lifted by its ring, and down through the aperture did he drop, I following. The lazarette deck came so low that we had to squat when still or move upon our knees. At the foremost end of this division of the ship, so far as it was possible for my eyes to pierce the darkness—for it seems that this run went clear to the fore-hold bulkhead, that is ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... Wils?" queried Bludsoe, a squat, bow-legged cowpuncher who appeared to be crippled or ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... was drenched in moonshine—moonshine that silvered the unmown grass-plots, and converted the white rose-bushes into squat-figured wraiths, and tinged the red ones with dim purple hues. On every side the foliage blurred into ambiguous vistas, where fireflies loitered; and the long shadows of the nearer trees, straining across the grass, were wried patterns scissored out of blue velvet. ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... of the street sat and crouched the small squat figures of the Alaskan Indians, each with a mat before it on which the owner had set out his little store of wares—bottles of various-coloured sands, reindeer slippers beautifully embroidered in blue ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... "The pulpit and the tea-table are centers of similar phenomena. Now I think of it, the pulpit is a very fair calyx, but the tea-table is sadly squat." ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... of the stairway was in the back entry which itself opened upon the rear porch. As she came lightly down the stairs Louise saw a squat, square figure standing in the open doorway. It was topped by a man's felt hat and was dressed in a loose, shapeless coat and a scant skirt down to the tops of a pair ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... of the arroyo, the Mexicans reined up. The elder, squat, broad of back, a black handkerchief tied round his thick neck, reached into his pocket and drew out tobacco and cigarette papers. The other, hardly more than a boy, urged that they hasten. Fear vibrated in his voice. ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... the east wing of the squat adobe house. About midnight there was a vigorous and persistent ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... gals, spread yeourselves areound and squat; take care o' yeour corset strings, and keep deth-ly still. Wall; neow, yeou all sot? Hain't none o' ye been in the pedlin' business, I guess; wall, no matter, tho' it's dread-ful pleasant sometimes: then ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... For all her squat figure and her broad, dull face, she was quick of action as a weasel. She put her hands behind her, and, thrusting her head forward, caught the coin in her teeth. It was well done; so well that I said "Brava," and the braves around me gave ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith |
