"Squat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Ispahan. On the walls are pictures of Washington, Jefferson, and the great Boss Tweed; and right under the last named, behind that preciously carved mahogany desk, in that soft rolling mahogany chair, is the squat figure of the big Boss. On the desk before him, besides a plethora of documents, lay many things pell-mell, among which I noticed a box of cigars, the Criminal Code, and, most prominent of all, the Boss' feet, raised there ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... and with his eyes fixed on the man in front of him he had not seen him. But now an image presented itself to them, an image not of the man he saw, but of another man. It was as though he were looking into one of those distorting mirrors that make you extraordinarily squat or outrageously elongate, but here exactly the opposite took place, and in the obese, ugly old man he caught the shadowy glimpse of a stripling. He gave him now a quick, searching scrutiny. Why had a haphazard stroll brought him just to ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... measuring 540 feet on each side. In the centre of this, on a raised platform, stands the tomb itself, a square measuring 69 feet on each side. It is two stories in height, and at each angle is an octagonal tower, surmounted by an open pavilion. The towers, however, are rather squat in proportion, and the general design of the building very far from being so pleasing as that of many less pretentious tombs in the neighbourhood. Had it, indeed, been built in red sandstone, or even with an inlay of white marble like that of Humayun, it would not have attracted much attention, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... against the mat of the night. McCord closed his mouth and opened it again for two words: "By gracious!" The following instant he had the lantern and was after her. I watched him go up above my head—a ponderous, swaying climber into the sky—come to the cross-trees, and squat there with his knees clamped around the mast. The clear star of the lantern shot this way and that for a moment, then it disappeared, and in its place there sprang out a bag of yellow light, like a fire-balloon at anchor in the heavens. I could see the shadows of his head and hands moving ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... seek me out thy God, my God to be, And die from out myself to live in thee) — Now, Cousin Clover, tell me in mine ear: Go'st thou to market with thy pink and green? Of what avail, this color and this grace? Wert thou but squat of stem and brindle-brown, Still careless herds would feed. A poet, thou: What worth, what worth, the whole of all thine art? Three-Leaves, instruct me! I am sick of price. Framed in the arching of two clover-stems Where-through I gaze from off my hill, ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... of the Downs at a lurching gallop; down the ragged rut-worn lane, the dusty convolvuluses glimmering up at him in the dusk; past the squat-spired Church in the high Churchyard among the sycamores; down the rough and twisted Highstreet of Newhaven in the chill of that August evening, as no man had ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... ululation that carries from spitzkop to spitzkop across the miles of karroo or high-grass veld between. And she unpinned her hat and waved it, standing amongst the thickly-growing poppies and chamomile on the high crest of the sand-wave, while her shadow—a squat, blue dwarf with arms out of all proportion—flourished and gesticulated ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... and that if I was going to reach Fort Ross I must cross it somehow or other, but how to get over was the throuble. I'd be dhrowned if I thried, and be no better off than poor Sandy and the rest, so at last I thought to myself, 'I'll just squat where I am; maybe some canoes will be coming this way, or some friendly Indians will be finding me out.' Well, that's the long and short ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... apparatus provided for your comfort in the bathroom is a wooden board, or rack, on which you squat, while you pour water over yourself with a tin pint-pot. It is well to see that no scorpion, or other stinging insect, has hid up in any of the crevices of the board. A very refreshing bath can be secured in this primitive way, and suggestions for improved methods are scarcely ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... A squat tub of a boat, her stern piled high with wicker crab-pots, came round the northern headland and entered the little bay. The elderly fisherman who was rowing rested on his oars and sat contemplating the crab-pots in the stem. A younger man, clad ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... and utter detachment from self, would doubtlessly prove wearisome in the extreme, neither for a true explanation thereof can help be got from highly or lowly born native. Without movement for hours he will sit or squat, as becomes his station, staring, as we should say, vacantly into space, in reality seeing and hearing that which others, blinded by material enjoyment, can never hope to ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... hold to those who come later the same relation that those who came earlier held to him. Suppose now that taxes had been levied on labor products instead of land; all that any land-holder would have to do to avoid the tax is to produce little or nothing. He could just squat on his land, neither using it himself nor letting others use it, but he would not stop at this, for he would grab to the last acre all that he could possibly get hold of. Each of the others would do the same in turn, with the ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Hospitalier," who, like his brown-frocked lay-brother, wore a black stole over his white habit, as a badge of office. With the exception of the fine cloisters, there were no architectural features whatever about the squat, massive pile of buildings. The modern chapel, studiously severe in its details, bore the unmistakable imprint of Viollet-le-Duc's soulless, mathematically correct Gothic. Personally, I think that Viollet-le-Duc spoiled every ancient building in France which he "restored." I was taken into ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... light road-cart, trotted past. The driver was a short, squat man, his face almost hidden in hair. It was Dr. Buzzard. He was known for miles as a successful "conjurer" and giver of "hands." Most of the people around had perfect faith in his cures and revelations, and had advised Religion to try him, but the girl objected, vaguely ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... stranger, who, in Manuel's opinion, looked unpleasantly like a gringo, with his coppery hair waving crisply under his sombrero, and his eyes that were blue as the bay over there to the east. But when Dade introduced him, Jack greeted his squat host with a smile that was disarming in its boyish good humor, and with language as liquidly Spanish as Manuel's best Castilian, which he reserved for his talks with the patron on the porch when the senora and ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... pitched less angularly than is usual in this rainy clime. A welcome contrast, the Prior thought it, to the sort of architectural nightmare he came from. He found the structure already more than half- [153] way up, the low squat pillars ready ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... sat there in the garden he happened to look down at the ground. And right before his eyes a long snout suddenly rose out of the dirt, followed by the squat ...
— The Tale of Grunty Pig - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... meet them. After the vineyards had come wild rocks, set with crumbling forts, and towers, and chateaux; then the mild interest of fruit blossom spraying pink and white among primly pollarded olives; then grape country again, with squat, low-growing vines like gnomes kicking up gnarled legs as they turned somersaults; then a break into wonderful mountain country, with Orgon's ruins towering skyward, dark as despair, a wild romance in stone. But before we reached the great suspension bridge, the Pont ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... our peregrination along the main street. There along the wall squat dozens of coolies, with their carrying arrangement, sitting on their heels, and basking in the sun. Further on, one of them is just loading a huge earthenware vase full of the native beverage. The weight must be something enormous. Yet see how quickly and cleverly he manages to get up ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... come to the fire, her short squat figure lost in the depths of a chair which Mme. Poussette had found in one of the disused rooms, padded and carved, but also torn and moth-eaten; nevertheless a comfortable refuge on such a day, and soon the reverend lady sank into a ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... friends who remained in the East. Presently these friends also, seized upon by some vast impulse which they could not control, in turn arranged their affairs and departed for the West. Franklin looked about him at the squat buildings of the little town, at the black loam of the monotonous and uninviting fields, at the sordid, set and undeveloping lives around him. He looked also at the white wagons moving with the sun. It seemed to him that somewhere out ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... strange woman who was usually called Countess Satan, in Naples; I immediately attached myself to her out of curiosity, and I soon fell in love with her. Not that she was beautiful, for she was a Russian who had all the bad characteristics of the Russian type. She was thin and squat, at the same time, while her face was sallow and puffy, with high cheek bones and a Cossack's nose. But her conversation bewitched ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... 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 ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... of Say could not fail to arouse the sympathies of her own sex, even outside of her clan. Many were the calls from compassionate women. They would drop in, squat down, tender their services, suggest remedies, and gossip. Only one woman made herself directly useful, and that was Shotaye, a member of the Water clan. Shotaye was a strange woman. Nobody liked her, and yet many applied to her for relief in secret; for Shotaye possessed great knowledge ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... are rather under than over the middling size; the women especially are remarkably short and squat built: Their complexion is a dark brown, and their hair universally black and lank. We saw no difference in the colour of rich and poor, though in the South-Sea islands those that were exposed to the weather were almost as brown as the New Hollanders, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... own. Davies had proffered chairs during this recital, which Gaffney managed between the sign language and a species of "pidgin English," called "soldier Sioux," to interpret for him, but the family preferred to squat on the floor. Mrs. Plodder, tiring of the diplomatic features, took Miss Minneconjou into Mira's room to show her the pretty gifts the pale-face bride had brought with her, and Mira, with her five-year-old friend toddling alongside, speedily followed. Davies strove to make the double equestrian ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... are. Now shall we see if we can match them once more? I believe we can." Whistling faintly, and very white in the face, Trent opened another small squat bottle containing a dense black powder. "Lamp-black," he explained. "Hold a bit of paper in your hand for a second or two, and this little chap will show you the pattern of your fingers." He carefully took up with a pair of tweezers one of the leaves cut from his diary, and held ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... ugliness. One's admiration of a perfect thing always grows, never declines; and this is the surest evidence to him that it IS perfect. St. Mark's is perfect. To me it soon grew to be so nobly, so augustly ugly, that it was difficult to stay away from it, even for a little while. Every time its squat domes disappeared from my view, I had a despondent feeling; whenever they reappeared, I felt an honest rapture—I have not known any happier hours than those I daily spent in front of Florian's, looking across the Great Square at it. Propped on its long row of low thick-legged columns, its back ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... within a limited playing area. One player is "it". He can touch anyone who is not in a full squat position. The player touched becomes "it" and chases about after some other player. Players who for fear of being made "it" remain in the squat position should be pushed over. The squat position consists of knees full bent ...
— Games and Play for School Morale - A Course of Graded Games for School and Community Recreation • Various
... thousand people had gathered. The street was crowded and in the open space beyond they stood in little groups. On a slight eminence near the lake bluff, a man stood haranguing those around him. He was a short, very thickset little man, with very long arms—a squat, apelike figure. He talked loudly and indignantly; around him perhaps a hundred people ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... every non-com. down the long length of the trench was giving the same advice, and the Turks were allowed to approach until their squat forms loomed ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... hill are covered with most venerable beeches, and other very reverend vegetables, that, like most other ancient people, are always dreaming out their old stories to the winds. At the foot of one of these squat I, "Il penseroso," and there grow to the trunk for a whole morning. The timorous hare and sportive squirrel gambol around me like Adam in Paradise, before he had an Eve; but I do not think he read Virgil, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... he took hold of Chia Jui, and, extinguishing again the lantern, he brought him out into the court, feeling his way up to the bottom of the steps of the large terrace. "It's safe enough in this nest," he observed, "but just squat down quietly and don't utter a sound; wait until I come ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... in front of the huts and a board sidewalk, on which the amazons squat to perform their toilets, mainly consisting of the application of greasy combs to the half inch of wool accorded them by their Creator to serve the ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... but reveille and guard-mounting were the only ones where this was practicable, and an odd thing had become noticeable. Apache Indians sometimes stopped their ears, and always looked impolite, when the brazen trumpets sounded close at hand; whereas they would squat on the sun-kissed sands and listen in stolid, unmurmuring bliss to every note of the fife and drum. Members of the guard were always sure of sympathetic spectators during the one regular ceremony—guard-mounting—held just after sunset, for the Apache prisoners at the guard-house begged ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... comfort, the ancient Egyptians gradually developed the art of making mats from papyrus, a plant as important to them as any of our trees, fibrous grasses, or hemp are to us. While at work on the manufacture of these mats, the weavers used to squat on the ground. They became skilful, both in constructing the fabric and arranging the colors; the latter were quite bright and effective, being chiefly red, blue, yellow, and green, with ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... stream eating our lunch. Before us appeared two tall and slender youths, wreathed in smiles, engaging, and most attentive to the small niceties of courtesy. We returned their greeting from our recumbent positions, whereupon they made preparation to squat down beside us. ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... inside of the hollow and sloping very gradually upwards, left nothing for the wild winter gales from the south-west to lay hold of. The wildest wind that ever blew leaped off the edge of the hollow and went shrieking up the black sky, but never struck down at the squat gray house below. It was a good-sized house, wide-spread, and all on one floor, and though it was only built of wood it looked very strong and lasting, and to my thinking very comfortable. Coming towards it from the front, it looked as though a great ship had ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... So accomplished was he in this very oriental art that it was not uncommon for one or other of the sentries to listen to him through the opening in the shed wall, and the head warder who locked the prisoners' fetters would himself sometimes squat down at the door before leaving them at night, and remain an interested auditor until the blast of a horn warned all in the fort and town that the hour of sleep had come. It was some time before Desmond was sufficiently familiar with the language to ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... still full of Romanesque feeling, but the church having been much pulled about in the thirteenth century, it came to have a semi-Byzantine choir and two depressed domes, quite Byzantine, over the nave. The facade, with its squat towers, exhibits no lofty aim, but when one looks at the tabernacle-work in the tympan of the divided portal, the capitals in the jambs and the mouldings of the archivolts, the elegant arcade above and the tracery of the great rose window, one feels that although the Pointed ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... 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 them ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... squat Indian, good-humored of face, shook his black head till the silver rings danced in his ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... will not fast, or fast with difficulty, it involving the cessation of smoking, of which they are passionately fond. A Touarick, who was accustomed to visit Mr. Gagliuffi at Mourzuk, ridiculed the Ramadan, and called those who fasted, fools. He would squat down in Mr. Gagliuffi's house, and take out his pipe at midday, and say, "Come, Consul, let's have a drink of the pipe. These people who fast all day are asses." Other Touaricks, more scrupulous, always set out on a journey during Ramadan, in order to have the ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... never find a rest in any truce, except the utter defeat of her antagonist. And how she has tried—the happy thoughts, the faint hopes, the new departures and outflanking movements! And even to-day there the thing defies her—a coal-box, with a broad smile that shows its black teeth, thick and squat, filling a snug corner and swaggering in unmanly triumph over the outrage upon her ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... as grotesque as he is woeful, the dreary day itself, as it sinks, shoots one grim red leer at the doomed knight as he sets forth; in the penury and inertness of the wasted plain he sees "grimace"; the mountains fight like bulls or doze like dotards; and the Dark Tower itself is "round and squat," built of brown stone, a mere anticlimax to romance; while round it lie the sportsmen assembled to ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... you last. I've just come home for good, you know. I mean to have a jolly time at Margate by-and-by. And oh! my boy cousins and my two greatest chums at school are staying with me now at The Hollies. The girls' names are Amelia and Rebecca Perkins. Oh, they're fine! Do give me room to squat between you girls. You are frightfully stand-off ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... 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
... first of the newly-hatched 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 ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... thence continued to the door, which led to an antique, low-browed kitchen. A small dark passage led from the kitchen to a front room with a great fireplace, which rose so high that there was but just enough room between the mantle-board and the whitewashed ceiling for the squat brass candlesticks and the big foreign sea-shells ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... 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 to ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... 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 before them ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... she crept round the house towards the woodshed, opened the door, and stood in the kitchen, listening breathlessly. Her mother's voice drowned Granny's; it had often forced Ditte to her knees, but so frightful she had never heard it before. She was stiff with fear, and she had to squat on the ground, ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... they gain in elegance. A noteworthy change in the choice of attitudes will also be remarked. Orientals find repose in postures which would be inexpressibly fatiguing to ourselves. For hours together they will kneel; or sit tailor-wise, with the legs crossed and laid down flat to the ground; or squat, sitting upon their heels, with no other support than is afforded by that part of the sole of the foot which rests upon the ground; or they will sit upon the floor with their legs close together, and their ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... Tondo, furniture was scanty. Usually the family has a large dresser, which is ornamented with cheap pictures, and the walls are frequently covered with prints in colors. There is no furniture, as the Filipino's favorite position is to squat on his haunches. In many of the poorest houses, however, were gramophones, which are paid for in monthly installments of a dollar or two. The Filipinos are very fond of music, and the cheap gramophones appeal to them strongly. Nearly every Filipino plays some instrument ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... come to pass, and she was remaining for the sake of her unpaid wages. She was a young girl, and pretty for one of her sisterhood, who perpetuate, as a rule, the hard and strenuous lineaments and forms held to hard labor, until they have attained a squat solidity of ungraceful muscle. This little Hungarian Marie was still not overdeveloped muscularly, although one saw her hands with a certain shock after her little, smiling face, which still smiled, despite her wrongs. Nothing could exceed the sweetness of the girl's disposition, although ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... for intelligent men to tire of all this burlesque of politics and this solemn joke of calling it "great statesmanship," that is breeding these ungainly toadies—squat and warty. A country is great only as her political institutions are good and wise—not merely when it is strong in numbers, large in acres, and swarming with politicians and parasites that are worshipped as great and good statesmen. That is not the kind of greatness of country that I hanker for ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... short, squat, powerfully built man, verging on sixty, whose thick, dark grizzled hair, sturdy limbs, and hard hands, on which the muscles showed like cords, spoke of endurance and strength; he was, indeed, noted in the neighborhood for those qualities. His sons resembled him slightly, ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... a cigarette and yawned. The immediate prospect was dull. Savages continued to drift in, to squat and stare, then to move on to the porters' camps. There a lively bartering was going on. From some unsuspected store each porter had drawn forth a few beads, some snuff, a length of wire, or similar ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... was engaged in moving the timbers back from the railroad siding. Superintending the work was a squat little man—Bannon could not see until near by that he was not a boy—big-headed, big-handed, big-footed. He stood there in his shirt-sleeves, his back to Bannon, swearing good-humoredly at the men. When he turned toward him Bannon saw that he ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... give a place to the physical characteristics of Jesus. Suetonius in a very short sketch adds the personal aspect of the poet Horace, who, it is true, had led the way by such allusions (Epist. i. 4, 15-16), and tells us how Augustus said he was "a squat little pot" (sessilis obba). The "Acts of Thekla" in a similar way describe St. Paul's short figure with its suggestion of quickness. But the only personal traits of this sort that I recall in the New Testament are the eyes of Jesus and Paul's ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... practically a return to barbarism. You would have all men content so long as they grew enough potatoes for their daily needs. You would have England return to the conditions of the Saxon heptarchy. Each man would squat upon his clearing in the forest, ignobly independent, brutally content. There would be no longer that struggle for life which develops capacity, that urging onward of the flood of life which cuts for itself new channels, that passion for betterment ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... stood curiously watching us. There seemed to be at least ten of them—men as tall as myself, though not so tall as Georg. Swarthy, gray-skinned fellows—one or two of them squat, ape-like with their heavy shoulders and dangling arms. Men of the Venus Cold Country. They were talking together in their queer, soft language. One of them I took to be the leader. Argo was his name, I afterward learned. He was somewhat taller than the rest, and slim. A man perhaps thirty. ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... dangers, and it is imperative that he should know them. In those higher species where parental education is developed, the mother shows her young what things are good for it, and teaches it the terror necessary. The little bird or beast must squat and be still, must stay in the cave or lie hid in the grass; lest the fox, hawk, lion, or whatever enemy is to be dreaded should pounce upon it. And this pre-human method of culture has come down to its through long lines of savages with their real and fancied ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... those short, thick, squat little Bretons, with black hair and sun-browned faces, silent, slow, and obstinate as mules, but always following steadily the path marked out for them. He was forty-two years old, and had been twenty-five years in the household. ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... very squat, pot-bellied, little old man, with a plump, but agreeable face all of one colour, with sunken lips and very vivacious little eyes beneath lofty eyebrows. He brushed his scanty hair over the back of his head; it was only since the year ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... steamers, all huddled together, and our captain pointed out to me the 'Malvern' flying Admiral Porter's flag. Barges were tied up at the long wharves, and these were piled high with wares and flanked by squat warehouses. Although it was Sunday, a locomotive was puffing and panting along the foot of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Emanuel Sard's squat features and parrot nose, having robbed Mr. Sard of Quintana's cipher and of $4,000 at pistol point. And one morning, while roving around the guide's quarters at Ghost Lake Inn, Smith beheld Sard himself on the hotel veranda, in company with five ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... pied kingfisher (Ceryle lugubris) is a bird as large as a crow. Its plumage is speckled black and white, like that of a Hamburg fowl. It feeds entirely on fish, and frequents the larger hill streams. Its habit is to squat on a branch, or if the day be cloudy, on a boulder in mid-stream, whence it dives into the water after its quarry. Sometimes, kestrel-like, it hovers in the air on rapidly-vibrating pinions until it espies a fish in the water below, when it closes its wings and drops ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... eyes, and black ones with jet eyes, galloped round their hutches with playful grace. Now a scare would make them bolt off swiftly, revealing at every leap their slender reddened paws. Next they would squat down all in a heap, so closely packed that their heads ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... 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, carrying ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... with a tiara of beads, from the centre of which, directly over the forehead, stood a plume of red feathers, and encircling the lower face with a fine large white beard set in a stock or band of beads. We were beckoned to squat alongside Nnanaji, the master of ceremonies, and a large group of high officials outside the porch. Then the thirty-five drums all struck up together in very good harmony; and when their deafening noise was over, a smaller band of hand-drums and reed instruments ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... village which men still call Tyre, With leaden age o'ercargoed, dipping deep For Famagusta and the hidden sun That rings black Cyprus with a lake of fire; And all those ships were certainly so old— Who knows how oft with squat and noisy gun, Questing brown slaves or Syrian oranges, The pirate Genoese Hell-raked them till they rolled Blood, water, fruit and corpses up the hold. But now through friendly seas they softly run, Painted the mid-sea blue or shore-sea green, ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... 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 ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... or reed therein laid can she minister warm drinks unto you, as broths and caudle. She can likewise speak to you through the hole, and be heard: but if you hear the noise of feet or strange voices in that chamber, have a care to lie as squat [quiet] and close as ever you can. So may you safely hover [lie concealed]; for the cleverest soldier of them all shall be hard put to it to find you here, if it ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... me), a full quota of ammunition, and our tin hats. Each man had a piece of soap and a towel. After an eight-kilo march along a dusty road, with an occasional shell whistling overhead, we arrived at a little squat frame building upon the bank of a creek. Nailed over the door of this building was a large sign which read "Divisional Baths." In a wooden shed in the rear, we could hear a ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... 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, the relatives remaining ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... drink enormously, but he broke all the rules I had ever heard laid down about drinking. He began with a small, squat glass, which I believe is called an Oldfashioned glass, containing half cognac and half ryewhisky. He followed this with a tall tumbler—"twelve full ounces ... none of your eightounce thimbles ... not trifled with"—of champagne into which the bartender, upon his instructions and under his ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... inviolate. Thebaud mentions a tumor of the scrotum, the result of elephantiasis, which weighed 63 1/2 pounds. The weight was ascertained by placing the tumor on the scales, and directing the patient to squat over them without resting any weight of the body on the scales. This man could readily feel his penis, although his surgeons could not do so. The bladder was under perfect control, the urine flowing over a channel ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... time he could hear the lapping of the lake water on the wind, he was aware of the growing pulse of Hovig's generator ahead of him, alive and malignant in the night. Then the Fleet scout came into the glasses, a squat, dark ship, its base concealed in the growth that had sprung up around it after it piled up on the slope. Dasinger moved past the scout, pushing through bushy aromatic shrubbery which thickened as he neared the water. He felt physically sick and sluggish ...
— The Star Hyacinths • James H. Schmitz
... obeyed the orders of a stout, squat, vigorous man, who cast upon Christophe, as he entered, the glance of a cannibal upon his victim; he looked him over and estimated him,—measuring, like a connoisseur, the strength of his nerves, their power and their endurance. The man was the executioner of ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... low-ceiled, full of strange curves and low furniture with curved backs. It was all Eastern, as was the first floor of the house. Maria understood with a sort of intuition that this was necessary. The walls were covered with Eastern hangings, tables of lacquer stood about filled with squat bronzes and gemlike ivory carvings. The hangings were all embroidered in short curve effects. Maria realized that her hostess, in this room, made more of a harmony than she herself. She felt herself large, coarse, and common where she should have been tiny, bizarre, and, according to ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... squat, clean-shaven but hairy dark man, with coal-black hair sweeping round a big forehead, a determined face and large, indignant brown eyes. The Liverpool clergyman was of middle height, very thin, with snow-white hair, dark eyes and eyebrows, ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... the nearest signs of human life were a church gauntly silhouetted on the hill above Grimsby Center, two miles away, and a life-saving station, squat and sand-colored, slapped down in a hollow of the cliffs. But near the Applebys' door ran the State road, black and oily and smooth, on which, even at the beginning of the summer season, passed a procession of motors from ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... the fig-trees in a garden three Moors sat at tea. A carpet was spread, and I caught a glimpse of the copper kettle, the squat charcoal brazier tended by a slave, the quaint little coffer filled no doubt with fine green tea, the porcelain dish of cakes. It was a quite pleasing picture, at which, had courtesy permitted, I would have enjoyed more ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... grandfather was the first squatter. But the Rocliffes, Boxalls, Snellings, and Nashes will have it they're older. What do I care so long as I have the best squat in ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... spring to wash the temple of Vesta, carrying it in earthenware pitchers on their heads. In Juvenal's time the natural rock had been encased in marble, and the hallowed spot was profaned by gangs of poor Jews, who were suffered to squat, like gypsies, in the grove. We may suppose that the spring which fell into the lake of Nemi was the true original Egeria, and that when the first settlers moved down from the Alban hills to the banks of the Tiber they brought the nymph with them and found a new home for her in a grove outside ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... thin, bearded civillian whose brain conceived the strategy of insurrection; Antonov, unshaven, his collar filthy, drunk with loss of sleep; Krylenko, the squat, wide-faced soldier, always smiling, with his violent gestures and tumbling speech; and Dybenko, the giant bearded sailor with the placid face. These were the men of the hour-and of other hours ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... being common, I must help to uphold myself by corporal 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 ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... to Cuvier's in the evening, and went first to M. Jullien's, in the Rue de l'Enfer, not far from the Jardin des Plantes, and there we saw one of the most extraordinary of all the extraordinary persons we have seen—a Spaniard, squat, black-haired, black-browed, and black-eyed, with an infernal countenance, who has written the History of the Inquisition, and who related to us how he had been sent en penitence to a monastery by the Inquisition, and ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... quietly he glanced over his shoulder once, saw the light disappearing behind the great square, squat pillars, and then with a feeling of triumph that thrilled through him, he went cautiously up the rest of the slope, his arms outstretched, his breath held, and in momentary expectation of hearing an exclamation from the ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... was very quiet. 'Pourquoi ils ne repondent pas?' asked the Russian prince. 'Yes, they are quiet to-day,' answered the senior. 'But we get it in the neck sometimes.' We are all led off to be introduced to 'Mother,' who sits, squat and black, amid twenty of her grimy children who wait upon and feed her. She is an important person is 'Mother,' and her importance grows. It gets clearer with every month that it is she, and only she, ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... places of interest as they went along, and before they knew that the miles had been passed, they were entering the outskirts of the village. It was a typical Western village: low, squat, unpainted sheds of houses, with sandy front yards, and heaps of ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... of the flowers was everywhere. Fir-trees perfumed the air. Every doorstep was a garden. The courtyards were alive with the squat figures of capped maidens, wreathing and twisting greens and garlands. And in the streets there was such a noise as was never before heard in a city ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... is not a valuable commodity in Versailles—and finishes, when the huge black basket is getting heavy even for the strong arms of the squat little maid, by buying a mess of cooked spinach from the pretty girl whose red hood makes a happy spot of colour among the surrounding greenery, and a measure of onions from the profound-looking sage who garners a winter livelihood from the summer produce ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... serves several purposes. It serves as a kitchen, because in one corner there is a fireplace where the food is cooked. It also serves as a dining-room, because when the meal is ready, mats are spread here, and the inmates squat on the floor to eat their meal. It also serves as a bedroom, and at night the mats for sleeping are spread out, and here ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes
... chromos of simpering saints with preternaturally large eyes, more nearly resembling advertisements for a hair dye or complexion bleach than ecclesiastical subjects. Around the main altar stood armoured soldiers of Biblical antiquity, squat, inelegant figures that had first been painted on canvas and were afterward cut out like gigantic paper dolls, being put into wooden ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... had to undergo rough usage. Everybody walked upon it: the deep relief made it a receptacle for mud and rubbish. The effigy of the deceased, as was probably intended by him, was humbled in the dust: adhesit pavimento. The slabs got injured, and were often protected by low tables with squat legs. Later on the slabs were raised enough to prevent people standing on them, and thus became like free-standing tombs; but it only made them more suitable for the sitting requirements of the congregation. These sunken tombs, ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... 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 to feel the public pulse in Canada. Like a skilful physician he approached ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... spacious avenue lay before him with its silence 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 and longer, to be carrying Paris away into the far depths of the night. ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... extensive capital was ready to tap a certain big railway and afford a shorter cut to the sea. Such a cut-off would mean opening great tracts of woodland to the steam horse—and where the steam horse goes there go settlers. The timberland owners had found that settlers do not wait for clear titles, but squat and burn and plant until evicted, and eviction by course of ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... party would be complete; and Eric felt a moment's compunction at having allowed himself to be so much caught up by the work and distractions of London. When the car stopped at the door of the Mill-House, he looked with affection at its squat, sleepy extent, punctuated with lifeless, dark windows and wrapped in age-long slumber; as the door opened, he saw his mother silhouetted against the ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... the head of the stepfather who did so cruelly stare at the poor young David Copperfield, and became a man with only one eye which still held the malevolence that was hurled at that small David. And with this squat, crooked, evil image of the General Robert Carruthers in my heart I alighted from the train into the City of Hayesville, which is the capital of the great American State of Harpeth. The black man had swung himself off with my bags and that of the beautiful Madam Whitworth, who with me was ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... firing; but they always have a little to spare for gin and beer and tobacco. There is no light in the evil-smelling room; but there is a place at the corner of the alley where the gas is burning as cheerily as the foul wreaths of smoke will permit. The men go out and squat on barrels in the hideous bar; then they call for some liquor which may be warranted to take speedy effect; then they ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... good!" cried a squat, ill-looking fellow, whipping out a long knife. "Hung my comrade Jem, a did, so here's a knife shall blind him when ye will, Cap'n, by hookey!" And now he and his fellows began to crowd upon us ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... left over from the days when Transbalkania was a backward, feudo-capitalistic power of third class. The National Bank, the new buildings of the Borba and the Politica. And finally, set back a hundred feet from the boulevard, the sullen, squat ...
— Expediter • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... 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 beads, carved ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... 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 a ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... in the mean egg... Little squat tailors with unkempt faces, Pale as lard, Fur-makers, factory-hands, shop-workers, News-boys with battling eyes And bodies yet vibrant with the momentum of long runs, Here and ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... lifted suddenly, as storms have a way of doing, and a low, squat ranch-house stood dimly revealed against the bleak expanse of wind-tortured prairie. Rowdy gave an exultant little whoop and made for the gate, leaned and swung it open and rode through, dragging Chub after him by main ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... House of Sinbad in Ashar Creek has quite the effect of a wonderfully staged production. The huge, high-prowed mahailas, the crazy wooden galleries skirting the river, the quaint, squat minaret appearing over the flat roofs, and the dim light of lamps reflected in the still water made a picture at twilight that it would be difficult to beat for mystery and romance. A man in black with a fire of ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... quality who, flying the tyranny of the Triumvirate, had a thousand times by the subtlety of as many inventions escaped from falling into the hands of those that pursued him. It happened one day that a troop of horse, which was sent out to take him, passed close by a brake where he was squat, and missed very narrowly of spying him: but he considering, at this point, the pains and difficulties wherein he had so long continued to evade the strict and incessant searches that were every day made for him, the little pleasure he could hope for in such a kind of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... at the piano, a squat, gnomelike little figure, with those big ears, and that plump face, and those soft eyes—the kindest eyes in the world. He did not stop playing as Wallie appeared. He glanced up at him, ever so briefly, but kindly, too, and went on playing the ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... with very light hair and very pale blue eyes, are almost unknown among us; and when they do occur, they occur side by side with relations of every other shade. As a rule, our people vary infinitely in complexion and anatomical type, from the quite squat, long-headed, swarthy peasants whom we sometimes meet with in rural Yorkshire, to the tall, flaxen-haired, red-cheeked men whom we occasionally find not only in Danish Derbyshire, but even in mainly Celtic Wales and Cornwall. As to the west, Professor Huxley declares, ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... 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 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... all but insensible to the merits of her immeasurably finer impersonation of Santuzza in "Cavalleria Rusticana." It was in Mascagni's opera that she effected her dbut on November 29, 1893, in company with Seor Vignas, a Spanish tenor, squat and ungraceful of figure, homely of features, restricted in intelligence, and strident of voice. New York knew very little of Mme. Calv when she came, though she had already been twice as long on the stage as Mme. Melba, and even ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... in which he stood, for a wonder in this part of town, ran a fairly straight course. At its western foot he could make out through the drifting flakes where a squat structure suggestive of a North River freight dock interrupted the sky line. In his immediate vicinity the street was lined with tall bleak fronts of jobbing houses, all dark and all shuttered. Looking the other way, which would be eastward, he could make out where these wholesale establishments ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... fat, burly little fellow by nature; but when he put on his winter dress he became such a round, soft, squat, hairy, and comical-looking creature, that no one could look at him without laughing, and the shout with which he was received on deck the first time he made his appearance in his new costume was loud and prolonged. But Meetuck was as ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... announce that some "men-bush" are approaching. Going to the veranda, we see some lean figures with big mops of hair coming slowly down the narrow path from the forest, with soft, light steps. Some distance behind follows a crowd of others, who squat down near the last shrubs and examine everything with shy, suspicious eyes, while the leaders approach the house. Nearly all carry old Snider rifles, always loaded and cocked. The leaders stand silent for ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... human, I guessed; to judge by the small squat head, and still more by a thing like a tail or extra limb turned up behind and pointing, like a loathsome large finger, at some symbol graven in the centre of the vast stone back. I had begun, in the dim light, to guess at the hieroglyphic, ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... were already turning blue and getting hoarse by being so long in the water, but they set about fishing eagerly. First they went to a deep place beside the reeds; there Dymov was up to his neck, while the water went over squat Kiruha's head. The latter spluttered and blew bubbles, while Dymov stumbling on the prickly roots, fell over and got caught in the net; both flopped about in the water, and made a noise, and nothing but mischief ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... The passengers squat on furs or other coverings laid flat on the toboggan. The steerer sits behind and controls the direction by a trailing pole and sometimes with ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... to law with Dick, and was hence an immense favorite with lawyers; and how, when Dick is sued, he always, having got up a muss, notifies the actual party in possession, and who ought to have been sued; tells him he must look out for himself, and hurries off to find where John has squat himself into other property; and thereupon he thrusts him out again, and so on. It was a fiction invented by the English lawyers to try the right of two parties to the possession of real estate; because they could do it in no other way, and the 4th of July had not freed us from ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... ten oxen—five yoke. His far-reaching bull-whip exploded just beside Rip's left ear. The next shot took Squat exactly as aimed. There was a momentary scuffling of hoofs, an awful threat in the ox-driving language; then everything went on peacefully as before. The ox-driver caught the returning cracker deftly in two fingers of his right hand and settled down on his iron seat ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... man, at first sight, to believe that the red, green, black, blue, and yellow cosmetics, with which he sees such grave personages so variously dotted, diapered, cancelled, and arabesqued are worn by them in any mood but one of the deepest and most desperate quizzing. From the time of their first squat upon the ground to the final breaking up of the council circle they sustained their characters with equal ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... along the Embankment. Julie was as curious as a child, and wanted to know all about everything, from Boadicea, Cleopatra's Needle, and the Temple Church, to Dewar's Whisky Works and the Hotel Cecil. Thereabouts, Julie asked the name of the squat tower and old red-brick buildings opposite, and when she heard it was Lambeth Palace instantly demanded to visit it. Peter was doubtful if they could, but they crossed to see, and they were shown a good deal by the courtesy of the authorities. ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... am," answered the Nanticoke. As he spoke, he raised himself up from his couch of leaves, and saw standing at his feet a strange-looking creature, whom the beams of the moon revealed to be a little, ugly, squat, brown man, not much higher than an Indian's hip. His shape was odd and singular, beyond anything the Nanticoke had ever seen. His legs were each as large as his body, and his feet were quite as much out of proportion. ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... open lane down which he was riding. Presently in the gray gloom he saw low, square houses with flat roofs. Ladd turned off to the left down another lane, gloomy between trees. Every few rods there was one of the squat houses. This lane opened into wider, lighter space. The cold air bore a sweet perfume—whether of flowers or fruit Dick could not tell. Ladd rode on for perhaps a quarter of a mile, though it seemed interminably long to Dick. A grove of trees loomed dark in the gray morning. Ladd entered ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... in all outward appearance, the converse of his companion. His stature could not have exceeded four feet. A pair of stumpy bow-legs supported his squat, unwieldy figure, while his unusually short and thick arms, with no ordinary fists at their extremities, swung off dangling from his sides like the fins of a sea-turtle. Small eyes, of no particular color, twinkled far back in his head. His nose remained buried in the mass of flesh ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... one on this side," said Legrand. The negro obeyed him promptly, and apparently with but little trouble, ascending higher and higher, until no glimpse of his squat figure could be obtained through the dense foliage which enveloped it. Presently his voice was heard in a ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... traveller, Mr. H. Kuehn, spent some time at Sekar and purchased a couple of what he calls "old heathen idols," which are now in the ethnological Museum at Leipsic. One of them, about a foot high, represents a human head and bust; the other, about two feet high, represents a squat sitting figure. They are probably ancestral images (korwar or karwar). The natives are said to have such confidence in the protection of these "idols" that they leave their jewellery and other possessions unguarded beside them, in the full ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... 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 bootlegged whisky and fast motor rides. They furnished Babbitt ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... my father hurried us towards the tall belfry. It rose cold and white against the moon, at the end of a nettle-grown lane. A garth of ilex-oaks surrounded it; and beside it, more than half-hidden by the untrimmed trees, stood a ridiculously squat church. By instinct, or, rather, from association of ideas learnt in England, I glanced around this churchyard for its gravestones. There were none. Yet for the second time within these few hours I was strangely reminded of home, where in an upper garret were stacked ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... cross the smallest 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 ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... having breakfasted at the Central Hotel on his second day in the town, went out immediately afterwards, asked his way to Whitcliffe, and was directed to an electric tram which started from the Town Hall Square, and after running through a district of tall warehouses and squat weaving-sheds, began a long and steady climb to the heights along the town. When he left it, he found himself in a district eminently characteristic of that part of the country. The tram set him down at a cross-roads on a high ridge of land. Beneath ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... modes. But what is a perfect nose!—We only know that a 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 ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... back as 60 degrees South lat. Besides this, we lost our top-mast, which was broken off, and which, in spite of the heavy sea, had to be replaced; the vessel, meanwhile, being so tossed about, that we were often unable to take our meals at the table, but were obliged to squat down upon the ground, and hold our plates in our hands. On one of these fine days the steward stumbled with the coffee-pot, and deluged me with its burning contents. Luckily, only a small portion ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... Both the Hurons and the Iroquois laid in large stocks of fire wood, by forming piles of logs slanted together on end; and in one pile, here, was an opening through which he might squeeze into the center space, there to squat as under a tent. The ground in the village had been scraped bare of snow; he would leave ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... French designs, we have done what was in our power to support them; our Government can't help to float a bad loan, but I am sure we have done the French no harm at Washington. It will be good policy on the part of Maximilian to encourage Confederate soldiers, provided they don't come and squat in too great numbers. I understand that the French army is not to be withdrawn until it is no longer wanted by Maximilian, but that will not be till the ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... operator shut off his permission signal and came forward. He was a squat, heavy-set fellow in wide trousers and soiled white shirt flung open at his thick throat. The sweat streamed from his forehead. This oppressive heat! I had discarded my flying garb in the descent. I wore a shirt, knee-length ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... domesticate, colonize; take root, strike root; anchor; cast anchor, come to an anchor; sit down, settle down; settle; take up one's abode, take up one's quarters; plant oneself, establish oneself, locate oneself; squat, perch, hive, se nicher[Fr], bivouac, burrow, get a footing; encamp, pitch one's tent; put up at, put up one's horses at; keep house. endenizen[obs3], naturalize, adopt. put back, replace &c. (restore) 660. Adj. placed &c. v.; situate, posited, ensconced, imbedded, embosomed[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... been watching from one of the squat towers by the gate—each of which had a loophole-window looking out over the caravan way—for even before the head man of the cavalcade could reach the shut portals of faded gray palm-wood, both gates were thrown open, and a dozen men in white rushed ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... by an orderly who can be trusted to talk to any one he meets on the way. I leave by the back way at ten forty-five. However, here's a chance for you to practise deaf-and-dumb drill. There's some one coming. Squat down in that corner. Look meek and miserable. That's the stuff. Answer the ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... sounded through the muffling thickness of the dust, and a man made his appearance on 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 of weeds,—the ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... Glory turned, where a wire gate lay flat upon the ground, crossed a pebbly creek and galloped stiffly up to the very steps of a squat, vine-covered ranch-house where, like the Discontented Pendulum in ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... right they don't want folk around—any folk. I don't think that's why they murdered Allan. There was more to that. Seems to me we'll get a visit from a bunch of 'em. Maybe they'll get around with some of the rifles they stole from Allan. They'll squat right here on their haunches and tell us the ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... new to the traveller he made some further inquiries, and was assured that if any person in such a predicament will simply seat himself on the ground, laying aside his weapons of defence, the dogs will also squat around in a circle; that as long as he remains quiet they will follow his example, but as soon as he rises and moves forward they will renew ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... 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 ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... habit, formed of stiff brocade, gives her the appearance of a squat pyramid, with a grotesque head at the top of it. The young one is fondling a little black boy, who on his part is playing with a petite pagoda. This miniature Othello has been said to be intended for the late Ignatius Sancho, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... to it," said the hunchback, "an' you've got your hand on him. Them's store nails hammered into a store shoe, an' the corks are beat squat. That's Stone's shoein'. Now ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... possible the profile of Antinoeus, and then say, 'We have done our utmost; if, nevertheless, we fail to make the negro beautiful, then we ought not to introduce into our pictures such a freak of nature, the squat nose and thick lips, which are so unendurable to the eyes.'" True idealism treats everything after its own kind, making it more intensely itself than it is in the play of nature; the athlete is more heroically an athlete, the negro more vividly ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... and waited upon her with a faithful solicitude. The little woman had some tea, which the maid produced from a small silver caddy in a travelling-bag, and the porter, with an obsequious air, brought boiling water in two squat, plated tea-pots. It was the tea which served to introduce Maria. She had just pushed aside, with an air half of indifference, half of disgust, her own luke-warm concoction flavored with soap, when the maid, at her mistress's order, touched the bell. When the porter appeared, Maria heard the dwarf ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... a state of agitation. She beckoned him into the house and hoarsely whispered: "Dar's a dirty Injun in de shed. I wouldn' 'low him ter set foot in dis yar house, I wouldn', not ef he'd scalped me on de spot. He grunt, an' squat, an' 'lowed he done wouldn' ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... on the cabin roof and sat on the peak and I scrambled up too, and sat down alongside of him. Honest, that fellow would squat in the funniest places. And always he ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Ithaca, where there is a high mountain called Neritum, covered with forests; and not far from it there is a group of islands very near to one another—Dulichium, Same, and the wooded island of Zacynthus. It lies squat on the horizon, all highest up in the sea towards the sunset, while the others lie away from it towards dawn. {75} It is a rugged island, but it breeds brave men, and my eyes know none that they better love to look upon. The goddess Calypso kept me with her in her cave, and ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... since I was a squat little slip of a shaver the word had a personal meaning for me. Perhaps, if the only other home of mine had been less uninviting, I should not have looked forward with such high beating of the heart to that cold home Anita was making for me. No, I withdraw that. It is fellows ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... which has the popular and sympathetic rector, who has known you ever since you were a boy (or girl), the competent organist, and the valiant surpliced choir (valiant though small); the church which, under its broad squat tower and low spire, possesses, about its altar-rail, room for many palms and rubber-plants and for as many bridesmaids and ushers as the taste of the high contracting parties may require:—a space reached by a broad flight of six or seven steps, and wide enough for any deployment, ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... imaginary contagion from spreading. The furniture was the sparest possible. There were, I remember, only two chairs in the sitting-room; so that when a guest came (and I think I was the only one) Cullingworth used to squat upon a pile of yearly volumes of the British Medical Journal in the corner. I can see him now levering himself up from his lowly seat, and striding about the room roaring and striking with his hands, while his little wife sat mum in the corner, listening ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... 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, ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... in his task of emptying a squat chest, marked, Don Ramon De Guzman, Sevilla, "you don't think I'm going to touch any of this loot do you? It all belongs to you boys and Bluewater Bill, and I've no right to a cent's worth of it. The excitement is enough ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... of this animal by means of a number of breakages; a defect that brought our landlady on the scene. The enchantment of my father's companionship caused me to suffer proportionately in his absence. During that period of solitude, my nursemaid had to order me to play, and I would stumble about and squat in the middle of the floor, struck suddenly by the marvel of the difference between my present and my other home. My father entered into arrangements with a Punch and Judy man for him to pay me regular morning visits opposite our ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Lost the same character appears not as the heroic rebel but as the sneaking "father of lies," all his grandeur gone, creeping as a snake into Paradise or sitting in the form of an ugly toad "squat at Eve's ear," whispering petty deceits to a woman while she sleeps. It is probable that Milton meant to show here the moral results of rebellion, but there is little in his poem to explain the sudden degeneracy ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... yourself as a beneficent irrigation work, watering a wide expanse of green pasture and smiling corn, or as a well in a happy garden, diffusing life and bloom? Look at the syce's children. Phil Robinson says there are nine of them, all about the same age and dressed in the same nakedness. As they squat together there, indulging "the first and purest of our instincts" in the mud or dust of the narrow back road, reflect that their tender roots are nourished by a thin rivulet of rupees which flows from you. If you dried up, they would droop and perhaps die. The ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA |
