"Squatting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... solving the problem squatting like a hunchback's hunch squarely on Malone's shoulders. He thought he could bear the weight for a while, if he could only think of some way of dislodging it. But the idea of its continuing to squat there forever was horribly unnerving. "Quasimodo Malone," he muttered, and uttered a brief prayer ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... smite life open wide. Her child shall leap above its father and its mother as the sun above forlorn fields.—She arose from her bed. She held her child in her arms. She walked through the reeling block with feet aflame. She entered the shop.—There—squatting with feet so wide to see—her man: his needle pressed by the selfsame finger. The world was not changed for her child. Behold her child changing—let her sit for ever upon her seat of tears—let her lay like fire to her breast this endless ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... out, recognising Mac. The priest glanced up and nodded pleasantly. Two Indians, squatting on the other side of the fire, scrambled away as the shifting wind brought a cloud of stifling smoke into their faces. "Where's the Boy?" demanded Mac, ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... stopped short as the old mountaineer came over to where he was squatting and gave him a long answer to the message he had brought. The old man read it to him from a sheet of paper on which he had penciled it roughly. Bill Wilsh listened in a dreamy way, and Hamilton wondered at ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... stare at a coldly glaring spider that was barring their path. It was a small spider, barely more than waist-high. But something in its malevolent eyes made the two men hesitate about attacking it. At the same time it was squatting in the only clear path in sight, with tangles of stalks and leaves on either side. A journey around the ferocious brute might ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... best. Each was owned by its rider, and was his good friend as well as servant. The understanding between the two could not be disturbed, no, not even by the swollen Shenandoah! The trooper, floating free upon the down-stream side, one hand on mane, or knees upgathered, and carbine held high, squatting in the saddle on the crossed stirrups, kept up a stream of encouragement—soft words, pet names, cooing mention of sugar (little enough in the commissariat!) and of apples. The steed responded. The god above or beside him wished it thus, and certainly should be obeyed, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... Heathcote was allowed to sleep. He had richly earned his rest by his work, and he lay motionless, without a sound, in the broad daylight, with his arm under his head, dreaming, no doubt, of some happy squatting land, in which there were no free- selectors, no fires, no rebellious servants, no floods, no droughts, no wild dogs to worry the lambs, no grass seeds to get into the fleeces, and in which the price of wool stood steady at two ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... and partook of his hospitality on several occasions. I attempted to draw him out in conversation about New South Wales; but he was cautious, and gave me to understand that he had been engaged in large squatting transactions in another colony. From his general bearing and from the character of his associates, I came to the belief that he was not the individual named in the warrant, and determined to return to Sydney. I was informed that ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... rolling and wrestling upon the floor, occasionally causing the lodge to re-echo with their childish glee." Mr. im Thurn, while among the Indians of Guiana, had his attention "especially attracted by one merry little fellow of about five years old, whom I first saw squatting, as on the top of a hill, on top of a turtle-shell twice as big as himself, with his knees drawn up to his chin, and solemnly smoking a long bark cigarette" (477. 39). Of the wild Indians of the West, Colonel Dodge tells us: "The little children are much petted ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... first one, Sang!" barked Copley, squatting behind the plate and giving a signal. "He looks like a mark. Keep him off the pan, Mr. Umpire; make him stay in his box." Then, under his breath, speaking just loud enough for Nelson to hear, he added: "Not that it makes any difference, for you ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... he would begin? I do not believe that all sin comes from ignorance, but sure I am that if the sinful man saw what the end is he would, in nine cases out of ten, be held back. 'What will ye do in the end?' Use that question, dear friends, as the Ithuriel spear which will touch the squatting tempter at your ear, and there will start up, in its own ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... country lying under the 29th parallel of latitude, and I was to force my way through the southern interior to the City of Perth in Western Australia, by a new and unknown route. But, previous to beginning the new expedition, Sir Thomas desired me to execute a commission for a gentleman in England, of a squatting nature, in the neighbourhood of Fowler's Bay, of Flinders, on the western coast of South Australia, and near the head of the Great Australian Bight. This work was done entirely with horses, though I had two camels, or rather dromedaries—a bull and a cow, which had a young calf. There was ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... her little black babies. He had it in his claw, but she had him by a beak full of feathers and was a-swinging on for fare-you-well. Old Dominick was a-directing of her with squawks, and Ruffle Neck was just squatting over hers, batting her eyes with skeer, for all the world like she was a fine lady a-going into a faint. And there stood all four of the roosters, not a one of 'em a-turning of a feather to help her! They looked ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... clank of the trap chain. Heart pounding, hands trembling, I shakily drew my gun, and cautiously advanced. Around the corner of a bowlder I came upon a large coyote, with a black stripe running along his back, squatting in an old game trail, apparently little concerned either at my presence or at his own dilemma. As I stumbled toward him, he faced about, and without taking his eyes off me, kept jerking the trap which was wedged ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... veiled women and old men squatting under their open bazaar fronts, with coloured mats and blinds strung across the narrow streets. Fruit sellers surrounded by melons, and beans, tomatoes and figs and dates—a jumble of colour, orange, scarlet, green, and gold. Pitchers and jars and woven carpets; queer Eastern scents; shuttered ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... so old and fat and ugly that even the malicious and inveterate gossip of skulking breeds and Indians, squatting over teepee fires, could not hint at anything questionable in the relations between her and Carey. But it was a different ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to maintain some degree of rude comfort and keep up any kind of organised society with the scanty means at their disposal were very great indeed. The popular notion of the lazy savage basking in the sunshine, or squatting round the fire and loafing on the labour of his women, did not fairly apply to the Maori—at any rate to the unspoiled Maori. As seen by the early navigators, his life was one of regular, though varied and ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... before either Toby or Owen had finished eating, Steve hurried over to the pile, and squatting down, tailor fashion, began ...
— In Camp on the Big Sunflower • Lawrence J. Leslie
... A slave squatting upon the floor at the foot of his couch shuddered and touched her forehead to the floor. "It must be that the enemy have come, O Jad-ben-Otho." She spoke soothingly for she had reason to know the terrors of the mad frenzy into which trivial things ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the seneschal, rendered sleepy by the heat, seeing it was the month of August, waggled about in his saddle, like a diadem upon the head of a cow, and seeing so frolicsome and so pretty a lady by the side of so old a fellow, a peasant girl, who was squatting near the trunk of a tree and drinking water out of her stone jug inquired of a toothless old hag, who picked up a trifle by gleaning, if this princess was going to bury ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... comrade cries, "Say, Alf, take yer muddy feet out o' the only water we got to sleep in." Again a soldier squats shivering with fear in a shell hole, while the bombs are crashing over him, and dirt threatens to bury him. A comrade looks in and to his captious remarks the squatting soldier answers, "If you knows where there's a better 'ole, go to it!" Three men seated on a plum jam box during a terrific bombardment. Trees are falling, buildings crumbling, the landscape heaving, and Bert says, "Alf—we'll ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... thing to see in so sordid a setting; a great gilded joss, more than life-size, squatting, hideous, upon a massive pedestal; a figure fit for some native temple but strangely out of place in that ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... Vicenza, Verona, Bassano,—all are now at peace with each other, and firmly united in the national sentiment that travellers were meant to be eaten alive by Italians. Poor old cities! it is hard to conceive of their bygone animosities; still harder to believe that all the villages squatting on the long white roads, and waking up to beg of you as your diligence passes, were once embroiled in deadly and incessant wars. Municipal pride is a good thing, and discentralization is well; and we have to thank these intensely local little states for genius triply crowned with ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... squatting on the mossy turf and staring out, round-eyed, across the water. Suddenly he jumped, clapped both grimy little hands to his face, and piped a shrill "Oh!" A bat's wing had flittered past his nose so close that he might have caught ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... my uncle's correspondence underwent an exhaustive process of pruning and digestion before it reached him. Then the two little rooms in which my uncle talked; my magic uncle who had got the investing public—to whom all things were possible. As one came in we would find him squatting with his cigar up and an expression of dubious beatitude upon his face, while some one urged him to grow still richer by ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... wheel of flame upon the ground, hub and spokes glowing vividly in the center of a clearing. Curiously the girl rode toward it, unaware that the picturesque fire-wheel ahead was the typical camp fire of the southern Indian, or that the strange wild figure squatting gravely by the fire in lonely silhouette against the white of a canvas-covered wagon beyond in the trees, was a vagrant Seminole from the proud old turbaned tribe who still dwell in the inaccessible morasses ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... half-way down the programme. Noreen was awaiting it too anxiously to enjoy, as she otherwise would, the novel scene, the gaiety, the band in the enclosure, the well-dressed throngs of English folk, the gaudy colours of the crowds squatting round the polo-ground and wondering at the strange diversions of the sahib-logue. Charlesworth did well in the men's event, securing two first prizes and a third, and Noreen could not help admiring him in the saddle. He was a graceful as well as a good ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... afternoon the Swede boy came to the farm-house and, squatting opposite the little girl as she sat enthroned upon the lounge in all the glory of a stiff Turkey-red dress, eyed her furtively while her mother read aloud the story of Mazeppa. His pale eyes, under their heavy white brows, never wavered ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... of the criticism of religion is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion indeed is man's self-consciousness and self-estimation while he has not found his feet in the universe. But Man is no abstract being, squatting outside the world. Man is the world of men, the State, society. This State, this society produces religion, which is an inverted world-consciousness, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... over a few boulders, and exposed the sand that lay beneath them. Half a shovelful of this he placed in a tin dish, which he half-filled with water. Then squatting on his heels, he rotated the dish with a cunning movement, which splashed little laps of water over the side and carried off the lighter particles of sand and dirt. When all the water in the dish was thus disposed of, he ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... she watered her stocks, or tied up her carnations, she was enabled to throw an occasional keen glance in at the open doorway on either side of her; she knew precisely what Mrs. Barnes had for dinner, and how large was Mrs. Frizzel's wash. Squatting back on her heels in the intervals of her labours, and negligently scratching her elbows or retwisting her untidy coil of hair, she would even hearken discreetly to such scraps of conversation as enlivened ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... Rio Negro crossing," Dave announced. Then spying a little house squatting a short distance back from the road, he said: "We'd better try yonder. If they turn us down we'll have to take to ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... commandos which could have been more usefully employed elsewhere, and his presence, so far as it had this effect, was of great service to the perilously weak British force during the first few weeks of the war. If the commandos squatting before Kimberley had instead been sent to raid southwards towards the Karroo, and to inflame the Dutch districts in the Cape Colony, they would have met with little resistance, and advancing with daily increasing ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... stopped to pass the time of day with Jerry Muskrat they were sure to find Mr. Rabbit standing close by, listening to all they said. If Johnny Chuck's mother ran over to have a few minutes' chat with Jimmy Skunk's mother, the first thing they knew Mr. Rabbit would be squatting down in the grass right ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... moment blowing a hurricane, the next sinking to a happy-go-lucky summer breeze. I have seen a little thing convert a crew on the point of mutiny into a set of rollicking, good-natured souls who—until the wind veered again—would not hurt a fly. So with these. They spread themselves into a circle, squatting or kneeling or standing upon the white sand in the bright sunshine, their sinewy hands that should have been ingrained red clasped over their knees, or, arms akimbo, resting upon their hips, on their scoundrel faces a broad smile, and in their eyes that had looked on nameless horrors ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... The old man, squatting by his cooking-fire, gave him a civil nod, and he responded with a flourish of his quirt. The reek of sage smoke, the smell of dust and cattle rose rank on the cooling air. It was good to Boniface, son of the desert; it meant supper and bed, ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... and a few words from her, sent the whole gang back to their idling and working; while Baltic, quite undisturbed, dropped on all fours and crawled into the black tent, at the tail of the hag. She croaked out a welcome to her visitor, and squatting on a tumbled mattress, leered at him like a foul old toad. Baltic sat down near the opening of the tent, so as to get as much fresh air as possible, and also to watch Mother Jael's face by the glimmer of light which crept in. Spreading his handsome handkerchief ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... surmises beginning with the probable and skimming out into the wild fantastic. You can claim anything about a Throg and find a lot of very intelligent souls ready to believe you. But whether those beetle-heads squatting over on the mainland are able to answer to 'he,' 'she,' or 'it,' your solution is just as good as mine. We've always considered the ones we fight to be males, but they might just as possibly be amazons. Frankly, ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... head still hanging to his sleeve he went back to the house, and there caught sight of the other four Rokuro-Kubi squatting together, with their bruised and bleeding heads reunited to their bodies. But when they perceived him at the back-door all screamed, "The priest! the priest!"—and fled, through the other doorway, out ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... capital of one million pounds, and received from Government a grant of one million acres in New South Wales. They called themselves the Australian Agricultural Company, and proposed to improve and cultivate the waste lands of Australia, to import sheep and cattle for squatting purposes, to open up mines for coal and metals, and, in general, to avail themselves of the vast resources of the colony. Sir Edward Parry, the famous Polar navigator, was sent out as manager. The servants and employes of the association formed quite a flourishing ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... order had gone forth that a new trench was to be constructed in front of our present line—a hundred yards in front. Accordingly, when night fell, two hundred unconcerned heroes went forth, under their subalterns, and, squatting down in line along a white tape (laid earlier in the evening by our imperturbable friends, Lieutenants Box and Cox, of the Royal Engineers), proceeded to dig the trench. Thirty yards ahead of them, facing the curious eyes of countless ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... a considerable time on the way, she suddenly caught sight, at the northern end of the street, of two huge squatting lions of marble and of three lofty gates with (knockers representing) the heads of animals. In front of these gates, sat, in a row, about ten men in coloured hats and fine attire. The main gate was not open. It ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... that the place leaves much to be desired as a theatre. The shallow steps must have made somewhat uncomfortable sitting-places, though one must remember that the Minoan ladies often, apparently, adopted a sitting posture which was more like squatting than sitting, and that a seat found in 1901, evidently designed for a woman's use, was only a trifle over 5 inches in height. But male dignity required more lofty sitting accommodation; the seat of the throne of Minos is nearly 23 inches high, and the spectators ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... when to rise on thundering wings. Many ends are gained by the whirr. It warns all other partridges near that danger is at hand, it unnerves the gunner, or it fixes the foe's attention on the whirrer, while the others sneak off in silence, or by squatting, escape notice. ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... and gossiping; they were herded around the fire, squatting Turk fashion, steaming pannikins on the ground by their sides, heaped plates ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... main street. Great Scott! what a din! It was enough to drive anybody crazy. Each house, with its paper walls, hardly suitable for the climate, seemed to contain a regular pandemonium. Men and women were to be seen squatting on the ground round a huge brass hibachi, where a charcoal fire was blazing, singing and yelling and playing and clapping their hands to their hearts' content. They had lost somehow or other that look of gracefulness ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... Still squatting on his heels, he continued examining the fragments and tossing them into the pan. Suddenly there came to him a premonition of danger. It seemed a shadow had fallen upon him. But there was no shadow. His ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... that," bawled Hiram, who was squatting beside the Cap'n, eying him earnestly in his task, "I'll break in your head." Then he nudged the elbow of the Cap'n, who had remained apparently oblivious of his presence. "Aaron," he muttered, "there's ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... children-standing, walking, or sitting in the sun, under the shadowing of the palms. Men squatting, with hands clasped over their black knees, are watching us from under their white turbans-very steadily, with a slight scowl. All these Indian faces have the same set, stern expression, the same knitting of the brows; and the keen gaze is not altogether ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... and we strolled along together, discussing high matters of state. As we reached the tool-shed, strange noises arrested our steps; looking in, we perceived Harold, alone, rapt, absorbed, immersed in the special game of the moment. He was squatting in an old pig-trough that had been brought in to be tinkered; and as he rhapsodised, anon he waved a shovel over his head, anon dug it into the ground with the action of those who would urge Canadian canoes. Edward strode in ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... transit. The Africans are unhappily following the example of the Creoles in this district, and buying land, on which they settle in contented idleness; and your Commissioners cannot view instances like these without the deepest alarm, for if this pernicious habit of squatting is allowed to extend to the immigrants also, there is no hope ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... three black children are resting by a wall at the foot of the hill, one squatting on the ground hugging his knees, the others standing in easy graceful attitudes, with round pitchers ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... picture. Their big pipes even blocked the pavement at times, the men squatted on their haunches with their pipes a couple of feet in front and a passer-by had to be careful not to upset and smash them. A fine picture was made by two old fellows squatting on a rug in the open window of a small shop, smoking and drinking coffee, and looking as if they could curse to fourteen generations any customer bold enough to disturb them in their innocent enjoyment of doing nothing. One of our officers who knows ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... while the females ran away, showing their bare rumps, and carrying off their young in their arms. The rajah shouted with laughter and pinched my arm to draw my attention, and to testify his own delight, and sat down in the midst of the ruins, while around us, squatting on the top of the walls, perching on every eminence, a number of animals with white whiskers put out their tongues and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Borckman was twittingly asked how many drinks he had taken, and if that was what accounted for his shooting being under his average. Borckman explained that he had a touch of fever, and Van Horn deferred stating his doubts until a few minutes later, squatting in the shade of the spanker with Jerry in his arms, he told Jerry ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... lime. In the dining-hall, where fine old wines had circulated, were a hundred weary, dirty men. In the kitchen, where the fat cuisiniere had prepared her dinners, were now a dozen officers, some sprawling asleep on the floor, some squatting round the table ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... room to lie on the floor if he huddled up. The smoke of the tobacco filled his eyes and throat: dust, too; there were large flakes of it like sheepskin, but he did not mind that, and listened gravely, squatting there Turkish fashion, and widening the holes in the cloth of the piano with his dirty little fingers. He did not like everything that they played; but nothing that they played bored him, and he ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... room, with dirt-floor, walls of canes or poles, and thatch of grass. The house contained a hammock and two beds of poles, comforts we had not known for days. I threw myself into the hammock; Ernst lay down upon one of the beds; the man and woman, squatting, were husking corn for our horses; a little girl was feeding a fire of pine splints, built upon the floor, which served for light. As they worked and we rested the man asked that question which ever seems of supreme ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... proceeded to act. He picked out in the wood close by a very pretty clearing all studded with flowers; he measured out the steps, and marked the two extreme points with sticks, which he cut and pointed. He took the pistols out of the case, and squatting on his heels, he rammed in the bullets; in short, he fussed about and exerted himself to the utmost, continually mopping his perspiring brow with a white handkerchief. Pantaleone, who accompanied him, was more like a man frozen. During all these preparations, the two principals ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... yet we were every where asked to go in and sit down: all the floors were cleanly swept, and a log of wood or a rude stool was generally to be found for a seat for the stranger, the people themselves squatting on ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... turned King's evidence against his other companions on the charge of war treason. Squatting on the floor of the courthouse, their rosaries interlaced with their handcuffs, they assumed the air of innocence, but were convicted and condemned to terms of imprisonment. Two were called Isa (Jesus) and one was Adam. Arab life has more than a ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... long. He was squatting in the moss, a bone in his mouth, sucking at the shreds of life that still dyed it faintly pink. The sweet meaty taste, thin and elusive almost as a memory, maddened him. He closed his jaws on the bones and crunched. ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... come back from a night ride without finding a couple of cyclists squatting out in the gloom round a little bright fire of their own making, with some fine hot tea. Wherever they go may they ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... Our chief object is to visit a valley where the sandal-wood grows, to learn on what supply we can depend. High up the valley we come suddenly on a platform on which grows a large grove of bread-fruit, cocoa-nut, toa, and other trees. Amid them is a large idol of hewn stone of a man in a squatting posture. The figure is not ill sculptured. His mouth is wide, and his eyes and ears large, while his arms and legs are short and out of proportion. There are numerous other idols, of the same size and form, made out of the bread-fruit tree, arranged on either ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... the earth is many-mouthed with caves and cut with passages running from cave to cave, so that the inhabitants may go and come hidden from sight. Jawbone and Hairyman and Lowbrow, of the Stone Age, would be at home there, squatting on their hunkers and tearing at their raw kill with their long incisors. It does not seem a place for men who walk erect, wear woven fabrics, enjoy a written language, and use soap and safety razors. One would not be surprised ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... extremity, and while the half-famished seamen were at night squatting in sullen dejection around their fires, a large lot of sea-birds, allured by the flames, rushed into the midst of them, and were greedily laid hold of as fast as they could be seized. For several nights in succession, similar flocks came in; and, by multiplying their fires, a considerable ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... that bird was rampant, you would see your own arms, Marquis.'" And Mel replied, quietly for him to hear, 'And as that bird is couchant, Mr. George, you had better look to your sauce.' Couchant means squatting, you know. That's heraldry! Well, that wasn't bad sparring of Mel's. But, bless you! he was never taken aback, and the gentlefolks was glad enough to get him to sit down amongst 'em. So, says Mr. George, 'I know you're a fire-eater, Marquis,' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fraternities among the Hopi Indians of Arizona is the Tao or Singer Society. Such altars are erected in connection with the sacred and secret ceremonies in underground rooms or kivas in the different Hopi villages. Around these altars the priests arrange themselves, squatting on the floor, during their ceremonies, and engage in singing, sprinkling of sacred meal, smoking, asperging of sacred water, etc. Here they prepare their prayer offerings, utter their prayers, and practise ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... white things are the sabots. Peasant woman in sabots, don't you see? Women in Brittany, of course, all wear sabots, you understand. Convenience of the painters. I see you are looking at that little thing I did in Morocco. Ah, you admire it? Well, not so bad—not so bad. Arab smoking pipe, squatting in doorway. This long streak here is the pipe. Clever, you say? Oh, thanks! You are too kind. Well, all Arabs do that, you know. Sole occupation. Convenience of the painters. Now, this little thing here I did in Venice. Grand Canal, you know. Gondolier leaning ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... opposition and found instead of one man, whose form they had been able to distinguish from the boat, ten or a dozen more a few feet back from the shore, squatting around a small fire, the light of which was masked by a thick growth of underbrush. They were all dark-skinned men with heavy growths of black beard. They looked up without displaying any particular interest as the boys landed, but the sentinel who had challenged them came forward and held out ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... swaggering ruffian, but he only swore, and reiterated his threats. Then I told him to be gone for an insolent savage, and that if I found him prowling about the Fort again, I should send my men to take charge of him. Thereat his squaws began to jeer, and cut capers; and squatting upon the sod in a row they made mouths, and poked their fingers at me. Then they arose yelling and waving their arms, and followed the savage. It appears that after the chief left me, he went to the people of our town and proposed the same terms; for an hour later, to ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... Here and there a group of people were squatting on the ground, talking noisily. Here and there a beggar stretched out a maimed limb and sought for alms. Then close to the gate he saw that for which he searched: a man sitting apart with a blanket over his head. No one spoke to the man, and for his part ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... discharge from the Concho. He reclined beneath a tree familiar to him as a former basis for recuperation. He felt of himself reminiscently while watching Chance nose about the camp. Presently the dog came and, squatting on his haunches, faced his master with the query, "What next?" scintillating in his ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... Kinderlen-Waechter and Churchill, squatting down by the fireplace and poking the burning papers with old-fashioned irons, not until then, when there began a conversation and other pairs conversed on certain points all around the room, did I gain a clear idea of just what had happened. What they said, the vital scraps ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... to Athens, we decided not to incur the extra expense. Soon after arriving, however, while Dhemetri was making us a soup, and Diomedes was taking care of our horses, and Epaminondas was roasting us a joint of lamb, while we were squatting half-asleep on bolsters on the floor, hugging our knees, looking dreamily at the fire, and longing for supper and bed, the driver of the carriage came in, and addressed us in recommendation of his establishment in his choicest Frank, "Carrozza-very good-ye-e-e-s!' ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... undress was certainly a breach of discipline: but the captain, as he went his round, could not forbear laughing at the sight of the veteran soldier, who, gravely seated, in a squatting position, with his grenadier cap on, his regimental coat on his back, his boots by his side, and his galligaskins in his lap, was sewing with all the coolness of a tailor ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... my Kobuk is this morning?" The remark came from Loll squatting at the edge of the water-hole, waiting for ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... roll'd down the walls, as if they wept; And where the cricket used to chirp so shrilly The toad was squatting, and the lizard crept On that ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... idea that maybe a big frog was squatting right under her leaf staring at her with his bulging hungry eyes, Maya was about to fly off when something dreadful happened, something for which she was totally unprepared. In the confusion of the first moment she could not make out just exactly what was happening. She only heard a loud ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... uneasily. As he did so the pup lost his balance and fell to the floor. The little fellow struck upon his side but instantly regained his feet, blinking sleepily at the light. Barstow took out his watch and squatting nearer him studied ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... shifted to a dandy wind-jammer of sorts that can run rings round the old barky. I surmise I'm off for the South Seas, pearl-fishing, in three months. I'll take that Kanaka along with me, if y'like, Professor," and he cast a side glance at Cockatoo, who was squatting on his hams as usual, polishing a blue enameled ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... his first virile activity declined. Over most of the great wildernesses of earth you would have sought him in vain; only in a few temperate and sub-tropical river valleys would you have found the squatting lairs of his little herds, a male, a few females, a ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... there we can do when every interest in this State sits back on its wallet like a hen squatting on the roost, and won't stand up and let go until some assurances are given out? It isn't my fault! I went to you! I laid the case down! You didn't give me anything to carry back ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... her, never you fear," assured Jimmy, squatting comfortably down on the little fur rug before the stove—the skin of the coyote his father had killed four years ago. "I believe in being good to your mother when you've only got the one. Now tell us a story, Theodora—a real jolly story, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... I had a dim vision of a clear light like the shine of dawn, and solid ground sloping away below me. Upon that slope was ranged a crowd of squatting people, and a staid-looking individual with his back turned stood nearer by. Afterwards I found he was lecturing all those sitters on the ethics of gravity and the inherent properties of falling bodies; at the moment I only ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... the entrance to the castle. Here everything was bustle. Troops were filing out, laden with casks and cases. Others were squatting in the paved court, ready to receive their burdens. All were laughing and chatting merrily. There were even troops of young girls, of from ten to fifteen years old, who were to carry parcels of less weight than ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... Though it was sadly out of season, the carcass of a deer, fresh killed, hung upon a branch of the nearest tree, with a rifle leaning against the trunk as if to guard it. In the middle of the bit of sward a tiny camp-fire burned; and at the fire, squatting with their backs to us and each toasting a cut of the deer's meat on a forked ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... door, squatting on the ground, or leaning indolently against the walls, were some half dozen men of very singular appearance. Their principal garment was a kind of blue gown, something resembling the blouse worn by the peasants of the north of ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... sitting on an ammunition box, leaning against the gun wheel, with his feet on a little fireplace that we had taken a chance on installing, thinking the fog was so thick Fritz would not notice the smoke. As usual, our ammunition was stationed in our rear. One fellow was squatting on the sand bags and leaning against the shells; I was sitting in seat three, between the gun wheel and the left side, while another was on seat four, also between the gun wheel and the gun on the right; another man was standing ready ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... at Bendigo had farms in the country thinly timbered. North, south, east, and west the land was held under squatting licenses; with the exception of the home paddocks it was unfenced, and the stock was looked after by boundary riders and shepherds. To the south, between Nyalong and the sea—a distance of fifty or sixty miles—the country was ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... imitating nature. The oldest statues are impressive for their life and freshness, and are doubtless portraits of the dead. Of this sort is the famous squatting scribe of the Louvre.[14] But beginning with the eleventh dynasty the sculptor is no longer free to represent the human body as he sees it, but must follow conventional rules fixed by religion. And so all the statues resemble one ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... smoking kettle by the head of the bed, and squatting down beside it, began to eat as only a boy can eat who has had nothing ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... known as rivers in the inland slope. The climatic influence is especially noticeable in the indigenous grasses and herbage of the two regions. Mr. George Ranken, in one of his essays on Australian subjects ["The Squatting System of Australia," by "Capricornus."] draws an excellent picture of the reclamation and ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... passed at the ford came to the bluff above the camp, and arranging themselves in a squatting posture, looked down upon Williamson's party with longing eyes, in expectation of a feast. They were a pitiable lot, almost naked, hungry and cadaverous. Indians are always hungry, but these poor creatures were particularly so, as their usual supply of food had grown ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... awhile, and rest and eat!' said Dschemil. And the man entered; and food was set before him, and he sat down with the father of the maiden and her brothers, and Dschemil. Only Dschemil himself was absent, squatting on the threshold. ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... deg. A long while after sundown the mercury might drop three degrees, certainly not more. She cast an anxious glance at the sleeper, and her quick eye caught the lagging of the punkah, broken by fitful jerks, which denotes that the coolie—squatting on his heels in the verandah—is pulling the inexorable ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... men, as they sit about their huts Making drums out of guts, grunting gruffly now and then, Carving sticks of ivory, stretching shields of wrinkled skin, Smoothing sinister and thin squatting gods of ebony, Chip and ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... them, physically, for the kind of life they are leading in various parts of the world. To-day Gipsies are to be found in almost every part of the civilised countries, between the frozen regions of Siberia and the burning sands of Africa, squatting about in their tents. The treatment of the women and children by the men corresponds exactly with the treatment the women and children are receiving at the hands of the low-caste Indians. The Arabian women, the Turkish women, and Egyptian women, may ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... A young man squatting in a painful attitude at the edge of a flower-bed paused with his trowel in the air and eyed him with mingled consternation and disapproval. After allowing nearly a week to elapse since his last visit, Mr. Saunders, having mustered ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... of their end link, the other monkeys of the chain wound themselves up like a windlass over the branches, and squatting on the trees, set up ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... kinds of grain. The sheep and cattle runs are excellent, but they are now fully stocked, and new settlers must direct their steps to the southward, the Dale and Hotham districts affording scope and verge enough for many a flock and herd. Our own sheep were generally kept at a squatting station on the Hotham, some sixty or seventy miles south of York. Thither, after the races, we drove to inspect the flock. There was no road, and only an endless succession of trees, and of gently rising ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... and smoked, Karlee, humbly "squatting" at my back, allowed me to draw from him all that I have here related of his house and family, and much more that I have not space to relate. Of course, he could not have shared the repast with me,—all the holy water of Ganges could never have washed out so deep a defilement,—but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... of us inside. Sal on the sofa playing the concertina; Dad squatting on the edge of a flat stone at the corner of the fireplace; Dave on another opposite; both gazing into the fire, which was almost out, and listening intently to the music; the dog, dripping wet, coiled at their feet, shivering; Mother sitting dreamily at the table, her palm ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... asking himself if that "big barrel" would soon be done with his gabble, while Bolibine, perched on the box, was twisting his comical yellow face, wrinkled as a Barbary ape, till he looked like one of those villanous little monkeys squatting on ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... had cleaned the fish and cut some black birch branches which he thrust through the fish lengthwise. Squatting beside the little fire, the two boys now held the fish over the coals, turning them slowly, and roasting them thoroughly. With the addition of the trout, their ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... man are very amply provided for. Their crockery is simple and inexpensive. When the feast is prepared, each guest provides himself with a few broad leaves from the nearest sal tree, and forming these into a cup, he pins them together with thorns from the acacia. Squatting down in a circle, with half-a-dozen of these sylvan cups around, the attendant fills one with rice, another with dhall, a third with goat's-flesh, a fourth with turkaree or vegetables, a fifth with chutnee, pickle, or some kind of preserve. Curds, ghee, a little ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... Cowpens[6] Colonel William Washington[7] fought on the American side, and Tarleton got badly whipped and had to run. Not long afterward he happened to see some boys squatting on the ground, with a lot of corn instead of marbles. They were playing the battle of Cowpens. A red kernel stood for Tarleton, and a white one for Colonel Washington. The boys shoved the corn this way and that; sometimes the red would win, sometimes the white. At last the white ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... sedate Ladies of the Bedchamber mingled their shrieks of laughter in blind-man's buff and hunt-the-slipper with the Stuart maid as Lady of Misrule and arch-spirit of jollity. Pepys was shocked—or affected to be—one day by seeing all the great and fair ones of the Court squatting on the floor in the Whitehall gallery playing at "I love my love with an A because he is Amorous"; "I hate him with a B because he is Boring," and so on; and no doubt rocking with glee at some sally of wit, for, Pepys says, "some of them were ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... Squatting upon his haunches on the table top in the cabin his father had built—his smooth, brown, naked little body bent over the book which rested in his strong slender hands, and his great shock of long, black hair falling about his well-shaped head and bright, intelligent eyes—Tarzan of the apes, ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... mansion; his grizzly, unshorn beard, his lantern jaws and shaggy hair, are such as his home and family would lead one to expect. And now you have counted all that this man possesses; other furniture has he none—neither table nor chair, except that low stool on which his wife is sitting. Squatting on the ground—from off the ground, like pigs, only much more poorly fed—his children eat the scanty ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... L'quille; so the table fairly groaned with the luxuries of these winter revelers in the wilds of Acadia. With ludicrous caricature of court ceremonial, the rulers of the feast marched to the table, where their invited guests, the Indian chiefs, sat with them around the board; the squaws and children squatting on the floor, watching for bits which the lively company now and then tossed to them. "They say" that an aged sachem, when dying, asked if he should have pies in heaven as good as those which he had eaten at ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... to time these active women glanced back at their cottages, to see that the hearth was still alive, or at their little daughters squatting under the low wall which kept them from the road, where they had got all the babies to nurse, and their toes and other members to compare, and dandelion chains to make. But from their washing ground the women could not see the hill that brings ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... adjoining hut we found a Chinaman whom we knew,—a man who comes to the bank occasionally to sell us gold. He was cooking his supper, squatting over the fire, with an old frying-pan containing something that looked very like dried worms frizzling in fat. "Welly good" he told us it was; and very good he seemed to be making it, as he added slice after slice of cucumber to the mixture. ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... the plain was like a sea of liquid black, and the sky blazed with stars, we rode by a sheep-herder's camp. The flicker of a fire threw a glow out into the dark. A tall wagon, a group of silhouetted men, three or four squatting dogs, were squarely within the circle of illumination. And outside, in the penumbra of shifting half light, now showing clearly, now fading into darkness, were the sheep, indeterminate in bulk, melting away by mysterious thousands into ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... have a coast," he said to Bud. A smooth board which he found near the woodpile furnished him with a fine toboggan. By the help of an overturned chicken-coop, which he dragged across the yard, he managed to climb to the top of the shed. Squatting down on the board, he gave himself a starting push with one hand. The downward progress was not so smooth or so ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... to smother my resentment. An hour later I was eating one of the crows; and, as Gunga Dass had said, thanking my God that I had a crow to eat. Never as long as I live shall I forget that evening meal. The whole population were squatting on the hard sand platform opposite their dens, huddled over tiny fires of refuse and dried rushes. Death, having once laid his hand upon these men and forborne to strike, seemed to stand aloof from them now; for most of our company were old men, bent and worn and twisted with years, and ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... characteristics. Some were lying on their mats in semi-stupor, several who had just received an injection were patiently awaiting their dreadful sleep—one of the chief attributes of cocaine is its almost immediate effect. Here was a group squatting round a man armed with a syringe—fatal germ-carrier—busily engaged in mixing the cocaine and morphia. When the concoction had been prepared, one of the customers turned up his sleeve to discover—if he could—a spot in which to insert the needle; but ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... realize. It is easy to reconstruct the scene of building up the first terrace. Some fairly primitive man had emancipated himself from the old-fashioned ancestral habit of just letting the rain wash away the hillside, and with it the family's prospects of green food for the season. Squatting outside his cave he had done some hard thinking which, transmitted into action, had led him to build up a wall here and there on the hillside, a wall of clumsy stones kept in place by stakes hammered into the ground, yet a wall, indeed a terrace, ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... length he reached the cord of the valve, opened it, and the gas having a way of escape the monster ceased to rise but it still shot along in a horizontal line with prodigious rapidity. There were we squatting down upon the frail osier car. 'Take care!' we cried, when a tree was in the way. We turned from it, and the tree was broken; but the balloon was discharging its gas, and if the immense plain we were crossing had yet a few leagues, we were saved. But suddenly a forest appeared ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... infant" is most sweet—is not "foodful," tho', very harsh! would not "dulcet" fruit be less harsh, or some other friendly bi-syllable? In Edmund, "Frenzy fierce-eyed child," is not so well as frantic—tho' that is an epithet adding nothing to the meaning. Slander couching was better than squatting. In the Man of Ross it was a better line thus "If 'neath this roof thy wine-chear'd moments pass" than as it stands now. Time nor nothing can reconcile me to the concluding 5 lines of Kosciusko: call it any thing you will but sublime. In my 12th Effusion I had rather ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... years he remembered that day. He was alone in his brickfield on a gusty March morning-the Easter holidays had released him from school-squatting by his hole under the lee of a mass of earth and rubbish. It was a mean expanse, blackened by soot and defiled by refuse. Here and there bramble and stunted gorse struggled for an existence; but the flora ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... was the more serious, that game was not abundant just then. They had got into a flat, sandy, uninteresting country; all box-trees and ant-hills, as Australian Charley described it, with no cover, and nothing to shoot at. Bad enough for the sportsman, but highly eligible squatting ground, where the settler would have few trees to fell and abundant grass for his cattle. As for the game, it came in tracts and districts. Sometimes they thought themselves fortunate could they secure a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... villages Carlitos slowed down—then stopped. There was a group of old women squatting in the street before the door of an adobe dwelling. They swayed from side to side, moaning in unison, while now and then one would lift up ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... poisoned all the springs of her life. If the Emperor, said Peter, wanted to be a Christian, he ought first to have laid down his crown. He was a ravenous beast; he was a wolf in the fold; he was a lion squatting at the table; and at that fatal moment in history, when he gave his "Donation" to the Pope, an angel in heaven had spoken the words: "This day has poison entered the blood of ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... had been captured. He was forthwith conducted into the presence of the sheikh, who, with his brother Abdalah and other elders of the tribe, was seated by a fire beneath a group of palm-trees. Here, squatting on the ground, with a guard standing over him, he was allowed to listen to the consultation they were holding as to ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... pitiful figure, squatting down in the dirt and squinting about with short-sighted old eyes; and Varney felt ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... were told that they might go to see the soldiers, and as they had to get off long before daylight, they went to bed early, and left all "the other boys"—that is, Peter and Cole and other colored children—squatting about the fires and trying to help the cooks to pile ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... the eatables, which had been prepared by the Indians. Perhaps some reader at a distance might suppose this supper to have been taken in a wigwam; with the fire-place in the centre, a hole above for the escape of smoke; and the party squatting down upon the ground, with legs crossed in tailor fashion, around a single dish: no, no; but it was prepared in a good, substantial house; on a table with a table-cloth, with crockery, dishes, tea-cups and saucers, and knives and forks, such as are used ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... dark, except for the fitful blue flare of alcohol and salt burning in a fudge pan. The guests were squatting about on sofa cushions, looking decidedly spotty in the unbecoming light. Patty silently dropped down on a vacant cushion, and lent polite attention to Evalina, who at the moment ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... here—facin' south," Casey told himself, squatting on his heels within the rock circle that marked the walls of the tepee. "He said, 'Got heap big gol' mine, me—' and he turned his hand that way." Casey squinted at the distant blue ridge that was an unnamed spur of the Tippipahs. "It's ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower |
