"Squat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... day on the Mississip, And her day come at last,— The "Movastar" was a better boat, But the "Belle" she wouldn't be passed. And so she come tearin' along that night— The oldest craft on the line— With a nigger squat on her safety valve, And her furnace crammed, ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
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... blunt, and he has hitherto been ruder, more ignorant, more fond of quarrel and drinking, more given up to superstition and old things than others; for his land was the home of priestcraft and monkery. You may ever distinguish the national Bavarian by his nervous squat body, small round head, and beer-belly, immediately beneath which the trousers begin; hence the braces or belt is indispensible. The showy belt, is, as in the Tyrol, matter of national pomp, so with the girls the boddice; and both are as little known in the north as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various
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... the way till they reached a clump of bushes where they could squat down with a good view of the sleeper, who remained ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
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... whether in size or in shape, from the rather stately steamships to the little tug-boats that shoot to and fro like gnats upon the surface of a pool. I say rather stately, for the high and graceful hull of the steamer comes to a lame and impotent conclusion in its squat chimney, like a large-faced man with a mayhemed nose, and in its toy masts and rigging, like a stout woman with curl-papers or a thin wisp of ringlet. When two or three of these steamships are together down the harbor, their white volleys of smoke often ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
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... on the Mississip, And her day come at last. The Movastar was a better boat, But the Belle she wouldn't be passed; And so come tearin' along that night,— The oldest craft on the line, With a nigger squat on her safety valve, And her furnace crammed, rosin ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
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... 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 ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
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... in the North, when long distances and staying qualities are required. But for short, sharp dashes of twenty to thirty miles the lighter built and more vivacious Straits dog is the speedier and certainly the less wolfish. We have attempted crossbreeding our somewhat squat-legged Eskimo dogs with Kentucky wolf hounds, to combine speed with endurance. The mail-carrier from Fullerton to Winnipeg found that combination very desirable. With us, however, it did not succeed. The pups were lank and weedy and ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
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... fain give study all the day, To make thy ways my ways, thy service mine, To 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 ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
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... 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 ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
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... last. The squat two-storied structure, similar to other merchants' strongholds, seemed unlit and unwatched. Carse swung back the hinged mittens of the suit and slid his hands out ready for action. In his left he took his ray-gun; then, pressing the mitten-switch, he dropped ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
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... under a tree near the banks of a 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 ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
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... He had never seen him before; therefore, he had no reason to suppose that that face was not the index to an angelic nature. Unfortunately, Tinker knew by sight most of his father's friends and enemies, and at the first glance he recognised the squat figure, the thick, square nose, and muddy ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
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... A square, squat room (a cellar on promotion), Drab to the soul, drab to the very daylight; Plasters astray in unnatural-looking tinware; Scissors and lint ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
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... I see him now, squat, clean-shaven, with merry blue eyes in a mug of a face, sitting in a deck chair, on a scrap of ragged ground forming the angle between the row of canvas stables and the great tent, a cob pipe in his humorous mouth, a thick half litre glass of beer with a handle to it on the earth beside him, ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
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... paws just inside the shadow line,—for it was not winter, but a brilliant summer morning, the grass all dusted with powdered diamonds, the sky a turquoise, the air a joy,—under this archway, I say, sat a big St. Bernard dog, squat on his haunches, his head well up, like a grenadier on guard. His eyes commanded the approaches down the road, up the road, and across the street; taking in the passing peddler with the tinware, and the girl with a basket strapped ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
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... use a chamber and "squat" as savages do. In this position, the thighs support the abdomen, and force is exerted without straining. Massaging the abdomen by firmly rubbing it round and round, clockwise, with the hand, often does good, as does pressure ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
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... an Indian squaw, a little old squat, black-faced thing as mean as a snake. They've got a big brood of children, that boy you saw this morning is the senior of the gang. Old Hargus usually harbors two or three cattle thieves, horse thieves or other crooks of that ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
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... 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
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... sometimes—just from a faint phrase which had once escaped Stanley Lake—as the likeliest solution, that Mark Wylder had made a left-handed marriage somehow and somewhere, and that a subterranean wife and family would emerge at an unlucky moment, and squat upon that remainder, and defy the world to disturb them. This gave to his plans and dealings in relation to the vicar a character of irresolution and caprice foreign to his character, which was grim and decided enough when his data were clear, and ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
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... clattering flags of its dim, long aisles; without, you peer aloft to view its gargoyled waterspouts, leering down like nightmares caught in the very act of leering and congealed into stone. The spirit of the place possesses you; you conjure up a vision of the little maid Esmeralda and the squat hunchback who dwelt in the tower above; and at the precise moment a foul vagabond pounces on you and, with a wink that is in itself an insult and a smile that should earn for him a kick for every inch of its breadth, he draws from beneath his coat ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
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... other junction stations and been at the 'Mosafirkhanas' attached to these stations. They are discreditable-looking places where there is no order, no cleanliness but utter confusion and horrible din and noise. Passengers have no benches or not enough to sit on. They squat on dirty floors and eat dirty food. They are permitted to throw the leavings of their food and spit where they like, sit how they like and smoke everywhere. The closets attached to these places defy ...
— Third class in Indian railways • Mahatma Gandhi
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... of Monadnock there was made that afternoon an image of snow of Gautama Buddha, something too squat and not altogether equal on both sides, but with an imperial and reposeful waist. He faced towards the mountain, and presently some men in a wood-sledge came up the road and faced him. Now, the amazed comments of two Vermont farmers on the nature and properties of a swag-bellied god are worth hearing. ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
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... poking into the night, its whole body poised in that attitude of intense rigidity that precedes the spring into freedom, the running leap of attack. It seemed to be about the size of a calf, leaner than a mastiff, yet more squat than a wolf, and I can swear that I saw the fur ridged sharply upon its back. Then its upper lip slowly lifted, and I saw the whiteness of ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
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... earthworks, we expected them on us at once. Having only seven or eight tools to the company, we fell to work with our bayonets to make a hole to squat in. We had bluffed them so the night before that they thought Lee had arrived, and waited several hours before they drove in our brave skirmishers that held them in a wood until we had a good ditch. Though we ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott
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... there," the doctor said after a while, pointing out a particularly large, squat, irregularly built affair on the edge of the "business district." The architect, however, was in favor of an exceptionally large, high building in the isolated group previously noted in the "suburbs." But because it was nearer, they maneuvered first in the direction of ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
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... phantasm. The flame enringed the whole well, and at length falling back, in an incomprehensible manner, into itself, began to darken, and to emit vapour. In the midst of the smoke, the young boor recognized Godfather Stringstriker. He was sitting upon a crystal throne, a-squat, with his crooked legs tucked under him, smoking with exquisite complacency a pipe as thick as his arm, terminating in a bowl as large as his head. He seemed wholly occupied in tracing the progress of the massive curls of smoke, which gushed abundantly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
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... the meadow and got several snatches of song out of him, but not again the soaring, skyward flight and copious musical shower. By appearing to pass by, I several times got within a few yards of him; as I drew near he would squat in the stubble, and then suddenly start up, and, when fairly launched, sing briefly till he alighted again fifteen or twenty rods away. I came twice the next day and twice the next, and each time found the lark in the meadow or heard his song ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
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... open, and from the smoking-car drifts back a visible blue line of stinging tobacco smoke, and with it a crackle of laughter over the story which the young man in the bright blue suit and lavender tie and light yellow shoes has just told to the squat man ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
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... 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 day of ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
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... closer to the ground. "Apache!" he exclaimed to himself, and gripped his rifle. The band galloped down to the hollow, and slowing up, piled single file over the bank. The leader, a short, squat chief, plunged into the brake not twenty yards from the hidden men. Jones recognized the cream mustang; he knew the somber, sinister, broad face. It belonged to the Red Chief of ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
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... these thick-skinned animals, with a big head, a large, swollen snout, a mouth armed with teeth which extend a foot beyond it—animals which are squat on their short limbs, the skin of which, unprovided with hair, is of a tawny ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
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... Liz! She was a squat piece of indomitable energy, utterly regardless of herself and earnestly ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
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... calls and mewing, or seen her trail her wings to attract his attention, without suspecting their neighborhood. The parent will sometimes roll and spin round before you in such a dishabille, that you cannot, for a few moments, detect what kind of creature it is. The young squat still and flat, often running their heads under a leaf, and mind only their mother's directions given from a distance, nor will your approach make them run again and betray themselves. You may even tread on them, or have your eyes on them for a minute, without discovering ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
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... represented as very difficult; some merchants, however, came from it to a great mart which is annually held near it. The Sesatoe, who from the description of them are evidently Tartars, frequent this mart with their wives and children. "They are squat and thick-set, with their face broad and their nose greatly depressed. The articles they bring for trade are of great bulk, and inveloped in mats made of rushes, which, in their outward appearance, resemble the early leaves of the vine. Their place of ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
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... he heard steps in the passage, and the chain being unhooked. The door opened quietly, and he went in without saying a word to the squat misshapen figure that flattened itself into the shadow as he passed. At the end of the hall hung a tattered green curtain that swayed and shook in the gusty wind which had followed him in from the street. He dragged it aside, and entered a long, low room which looked as if it had once been a third-rate ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
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... was a train-bandit popularly known as the Lone-Hand Kid, because always he conducted his nefarious operations without confederates. He was a squat, dark ruffian, as malignant as a moccasin snake, and as dangerous as one. He was filthy in speech and vile in habit, being in his person most unpicturesque and most unwholesome, and altogether seemed a creature more viper than he was man. The sheriffs of two border States and the officials ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
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... by the very perfection of Christ that the uttermost evil of His enemies was brought out. There is a passage in "Paradise Lost," where a band of angels, sent out to scour Paradise in search of Satan, who is hidden in the garden, discover him in the shape of a toad "squat at the ear of Eve." Ithuriel, one of the band, touches him with his spear, whereat, surprised, he starts up in ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
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... seaman was, 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 ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
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... drawers and shoes tightened over the instep like the chaussure of European moutards: his foot (i. 540) is wholly out of drawing, like his hand, and the toes are European distortions. The lady writing (i. 581) lacks all local colour; she should sit at squat, support the paper in the hollow of her left instead of using a portfolio, and with her right ply the reed or "pen of brass." In vol. ii. 57 the lion is an absurdum, big as a cow or a camel, and the same caricature of the King of Beasts occurs elsewhere (i. 531; ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
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... if you please, as a vast, squat island the third largest in the world, in fact—half again as large as France, bordered by a sandy littoral, moated by swamps reeking with putrid miasmata and pernicious vapors, covered with dense forests and impenetrable ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
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... 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 ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
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... his visitor, but received no answer. Shefford saw a dark, squat figure bending forward in the saddle. The man was tense. All about him was dark except the glint of a rifle across the saddle. The face under the sombrero was only a shadow. Shefford kicked the fire-logs and a brighter blaze lightened the scene. ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
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... Teetzels' this afternoon, to explain about our cattle getting through on their land. It was the road-workers who broke down the Teetzel fence, to squat on a coulee-corner for their camp. And they hadn't the decency to restore what they had wrecked. So Bud Teetzel and I rode seven miles up the new turn-pike and overtook those road-workers and I harangued their foreman for a full fifteen minutes. ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
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... their dress was very disfiguring, and gave them a thick squat shape. He describes it much like Captain Cook. According to him, these women's features, though coarse, expressed great good- nature; they had high foreheads, broad flat noses, rather small eyes, and very prominent cheek-bones. His reflections ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
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... was saying: "I believe you're a square shooter, Vail." He was leading the way along the gravel path at the side of the house. Before them loomed the squat brick building that was ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
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... sinking over his ankles in the soft mud. Not a sign of humanity served him for comfort or compass. He had been assured that if he kept his back to the sun he would reach his destination. And he did, but not without many misgivings. It was the vision of a squat tower-like building, almost hemmed in by a monster gas reservoir, fantastic wooden galleries, and the gigantic silhouettes of strange machinery, that relieved his mind. But this house and its surroundings soon repelled him. His reception was the ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
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... time 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. ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
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... millions and a half in number; and these appear to constitute about two-fifths of the whole population of Mexico. They bear a general resemblance to the Indians of Canada, Florida, Peru, and Brazil: they have a similar swarthy and copper-coloured skin, smooth hair, little beard, squat body, long eyes, with the corners directed upward towards the temples, prominent cheek bones, and thick lips. There is a great diversity in their language, but they appear to have been all descendants from the same ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
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... cruisers passed the craft of comparatively small tonnage and power follow—the gun-boats, transports, and supply ships; and, almost forgotten, the monitors, riding undisturbedly, like squat little forts afloat, with freeboard so low that with a slightly undulating sea a turtle could swim aboard. And after them the destroyers, which look their name. Most wicked inventions; no shining brasswork nor holy-stoned quarter, no decorative and convenient ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
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... show Pulls Hard and Sioux Pete a trick or two of his 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 ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
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... clock along this trip, stranger. But I reckon if we want to git acrost them hills before it gits hot we'll be travelin' real soon. Leastways," as he turned and went back to squat over the little fire he had blazing merrily near the watering-trough, "I'm goin' to dig ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
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... below us. I lost sight of the vial almost instantly, but the indicating cross-hairs showed me exactly where the vial would strike; at a point approximately half way between the edge of the city and the great squat pile of the administrating building, with its gleaming glass penthouse—the laboratory in which, only a few minutes before, I had witnessed the demonstration of the death which ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
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... good-natured, and so delightfully aware of their shortcomings, that they were quite refreshing. Fancy Martha, the eldest girl, saying to me seriously, 'Dick is the only one who takes after mother and father; he is really nice-looking, you know, but Ailie and I are a couple of squat little toads. Now, please don't laugh, Mrs. Godfrey,' she went on, 'for we are very fond of toads, and they have such bright, projecting eyes.' What on earth could I say! for indeed poor Martha is almost grotesque-looking, and yet one can't help loving her. I know I had a fit of laughing, and ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
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... which twists back into the native quarter of Tondo, and affords a haven for the mixed population which labours on the Mole—coolies, seamen, Chinese mess "boys," Tagalog cargadores, Lascar serangs, stalwart Sikh watchmen from the hemp and sugar godowns, squat Germans in white suits with pencils stuck in their sun helmets and wearing amber-coloured spectacles. British clerks with cargo lists, customs brokers, barking mates with blasphemous vocabularies, Scotch mechanics with parched throats, ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
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... she used to squat herself under a couch and make all her servants lie above, one upon the other, so that if the thunderbolt fell, it might have its effect upon them before penetrating to her. She had ruined herself and her husband, though they were rich, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
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... I think," he said pleasantly, shaking hands with the squat little figure in front of him, "I remember her speaking ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
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... swiftly, and carried it, flaring red, through the door into the corridor. We followed him. There in the flickering light of the lamp was the machine sure enough, squat, ugly, and askew; a thing of brass, ebony, ivory, and translucent glimmering quartz. Solid to the touch—for I put out my hand and felt the rail of it—and with brown spots and smears upon the ivory, and bits of grass and moss upon the lower parts, ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
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... east wing of the squat adobe house. About midnight there was a vigorous and persistent shaking of ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
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... lived in the little huts on their small plantations, raising yams and bananas, and if the men became too drunken and abusive the women ordered them to leave. Among those people, in a tropical climate, with land to squat upon, most of the work is done by the women. Let no one imagine that the so-called "matriarchate" of early ages was an ideal condition of society. It was based primarily upon the industrial and moral irresponsibility ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
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... master, was now on a journey to Meshed, the object of which was to purchase the lamb-skins of Bokhara, which he afterwards purposed to convey to Constantinople for sale. Imagine a short squat man, with a large head, prominent spongy nose, and a thick, black beard, and you will see my fellow traveller. He was a good Mussulman, very strict in his devotions, and never failed to pull off his stockings, even in the coldest morning, to wash his feet, in order that his ablutions ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
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... was a second-hand bookshop, and much of the stock was almost as old as the building itself. A weather-stained board of faded blue bore in tarnished gold lettering the name of its owner, and under this were two broad windows divided by a squat door, open on week-days from eight in the morning until eight at night. Within the shop was dark and ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
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... Navaho language co'tce, a term probably derived from qaco'tsil, "sweat" and [)i]nc[)i]nil'tce, the manner in which fire is prepared for heating the stones placed in it when it is used. The structure is designed to hold only one person at a time, and he must crawl in and squat on his heels with his knees drawn up ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff
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... of them, into the shining splendour of the sea, to break off abruptly in the white cliffs of the Seven Sisters. The hills were bare and bleak in their austere yet rounded strength, stripped of trees, clothed only in resplendent gorse, here a squat haystack dumped upon a ridge against the sky, there a great patch of plough ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
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... "Well, Squat is over there in the trenches helping to make the world a pleasant place to live in. ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
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... several parts placed one above the other and each supplied with big round handles to hold them by when you take the monument to pieces. A dome, with an iron chimney, tops the whole edifice, which must be capable of producing a very hell fire to roast a stone of no significance. Another, a squat one, stretches out like a curved spine. It has a round hole at either end; and a thick porcelain tube sticks out from each. It is impossible to conceive the purpose which such instruments as these can serve. The seekers of the philosopher's stone must have had many like them. They are torturers' ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
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... Czecho-Slovakian affair.' Anyhow my Bohemian would have nothing to do with such nonsense; he called himself a son of Bohemia, and spoke as such in his criticisms of America, which were both favourable and unfavourable. He was a squat man, with a sturdy figure and a steady smile; and his eyes were like dark pools in the depth of a darker forest, but I do not think he had ever been deceived by the lights ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
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... out briskly at first, swinging his stick and watching his shadow, a squat, incredibly agitated silhouette in the golden dust. But gradually and insensibly the peaceful influences of that still and lovely hour tempered his heart's impatience; and he found himself walking at a pace more leisurely. After all, there was no hurry; he was unwearied, ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
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... appeared on the threshold of the chapel, motionless, squat, and almost as broad as he was tall; squared on the base, as a great man says; with his doublet half red, half violet, sown with silver bells, and, above all, in the perfection of his ugliness, the populace recognized him on the instant, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
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... stirred a dip-net through the liquid mud. Faint in the distance harsh cries sounded now and then, and the soft popping of small-arms,—tiny revolts in the reign of a stillness aged and formidable. Crumbling walls and squat ruins, black and green-patched with mould—old towers of defense against pirates—guarded from either bank the turns of the river. In one reach, a "war-junk," her sails furled, lay at anchor, the red and white eyes staring fish-like from her black prow: ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
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... necessity. The broad windows were trellised with vines, through which filtered the sunshine. A cooling evening breeze stirred the leaves lazily. The chairs were broad and comfortable—the workmanship of the monks of the neighboring mission. In the corners stood squat, earthen water-jars of Mexican molding. On the adobe walls were hung trophies of the hunt; war-bonnets and the crudely made ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
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... and sunshine—of droning bees and the nameless fragrance of summer fields it was! And the struggling nomads of the dusty road! Diane felt a kindred thrill of interest in each one of them. Now a Syrian peddler woman, squat and swarthy, bending heavily beneath her pack amid a flurry of dust from the sun-baked roads her feet had wearily padded for days; now a sleepy negro on a load of hay, an organ grinder with a chattering ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
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... clever method that accelerates decomposition by improving aeration and facilitating frequent turning. A rotating drum holding from eight to eighteen bushels (the larger sizes look like a squat, fat, oversized oil drum) is suspended above the ground, top-loaded with organic matter, and then tumbled every few days for a few weeks until the materials have decomposed. Then the door is opened and finished compost ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
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... than five feet in height, with proportions suggesting those of a gorilla—a tremendous breadth of shoulders, thick, short neck and broad, squat head, which had a tangled growth of black hair and was topped with a crimson fez. A tunic of the same color, belted tightly to the waist, reached the seat—apparently a box—upon which he sat; his legs and feet were not seen. His left ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
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... squat bottle on the bar, and thinking it best to humor the both of them I poured out a stiff drink, fully aware that Rale was ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
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... to the lofty poop of the ship clambered a short, squat man in marvellous wide breeches and a great cutlass on hip, who clapping speaking-trumpet ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
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... 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 after her first ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
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... of wood for legs—a truly Titanic bedstead; one might have put a ton or two on it—it would not have bent under the load; under the bed was a solid chest; in a corner stood a little table of the same strong kind, and near the table a three-legged stool, so solid and squat that Gerasim himself would sometimes pick it up and drop it again with a smile of delight. The garret was locked up by means of a padlock that looked like a kalatch or basket-shaped loaf, only black; the key of this padlock Gerasim always carried about him in his girdle. He did not like people ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
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... wandered restlessly about dark, medieval streets where squat groups were clustered about some coffee house door, intent upon a game of checkers or some patriarchal story teller, recounting, very probably, a bandied narration of the Thousand and One Nights. Through other open doors drifted the exasperating nasal twang of Cairene music, and idly pausing, ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
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... queer sight 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 ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
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... me in future. He need not go into the kitchen to scare the maids. I could see they looked at him as if he had been his infernal majesty, as he came in. He can do it anywhere; all he wants is an iron pot with some holes in it, and some charcoal. He can squat out there on the veranda, or, if it is bad weather, any shed will ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
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... you about. They've cut the 'phone down to the 'llano' as a start. But that's nothing. You just go and squat by the engine and see what happens. ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
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... invisible from the landing below, and out west of the bridge under the open sky. The roof, hemmed in by a low wall, seemed like a terrace, which, to his astonishment, was brilliant with flowers; in the rich surrounding, the house sat squat, a plain square block, unbroken except by a doorway in front. A dustless path led to the door, through a bordering of shrubs of Persian rose in perfect bloom. Breathing a sweet attar-perfume, he followed ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
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... pretty place Cesena must be if Ravenna is better, for there your ears are pierced by the mosquito of the Po and a talkative mob of frogs is always croaking round you. Ravenna is a mere marsh where all the conditions of life are reversed, where walls fall and waters stand, towers flow down and ships squat, invalids walk about and their doctors take to bed, baths freeze and houses burn, the living perish with thirst and the dead swim about on the surface of the water, thieves watch and magistrates sleep, priests lend at usury and Syrians sing psalms, merchants ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
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... 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
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... mistake. A stony road wound along the stream, flanked by forest-clad heights; she recognized the timber bridge over the ravine, which had been described to her, the corduroy way across the swamp, the single, squat cabin crowning a half-cleared hillock. She realized at a glance the awful trap that this silent, deadly place could be turned into; for one rushing moment her widening eyes could almost see blue masses of men in disorder, crushed into that ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
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... like that, and I was bidden to rest in a Highland shieling, squat of form, thatched with rushes, floored with earth, and eat a bannock and drink a bowl of goat's milk, while my message went forward and an answer returned. Perhaps two hours passed, and I slept a little, for I was tired, ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
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... weeds. Out in the stable lot, where the grass was grazed so close that the geese could barely nip it, she would sometimes get one of the negro men to scare the little pigs, for the delight of seeing them squat as though hidden, when they were no more hidden than if they had spread themselves out upon so many dinner dishes. All of us reveal traces of this primitive instinct upon occasion. Daphne was doing her ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
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... gravely, putting his right hand first to his heart, next to his forehead, and then kissing the two foremost fingers laid across his lips, we replying as best we could with a bowing and scraping. These formalities concluded, the Don and the old Moor walk apart, and we squat down again to ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
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... demand, are ready to commit crimes worse than those of which they now are guilty. All falsehood and all blasphemy proceed from them. They have set the last hand at establishing universal corruption. They are a public plague, the plague of the world, chameleons who take their color from the soil they squat on, flatterers of princes, perverters of youth. They not only excuse but laud lying; their dissimulation is bare and unqualified mendacity; their malice is inestimable. They have the art so to blend their interests and that of Rome, seeking for themselves ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
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... us long to find the dark bulk of the disintegrator. It was a squat cylinder, for all the world like a huge boiler. At one end there up-ended a periscope arrangement which broadened out to a funnel. In the funnel was a very powerful lens, cut to special measurements. The light of the sun, or any light, for ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
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... bend of the river, they beheld a city of logs and canvas sprawled between the stream and a curving mountain-side. The day was still and clear, hence vertical pencil-markings of blue smoke hung over the roofs; against the white background squat dwellings stood out distinctly, like diminutive dolls' houses. Upon closer approach the river shore was seen to be lined with scows and rowboats; a stern- wheeled river steamer lay moored abreast of ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
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... to a stop at last at the siding of the station. Benito was a typical desert settlement, the very last link with civilization. For beyond the three squat adobe shacks, lay the sandy, cactus-dotted land that stretched far out in every direction to the rising foothills that ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
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... their own churchyard, and whisper to one another when they play upon its summit that a great giant in golden armour lies buried in a stone vault underneath. But if only they knew the real truth, they would say instead that that big, ungainly, overgrown grave covers the remains of a short, squat, dwarfish chieftain, akin in shape and feature to the Lapps and Finns, and about as much unlike a giant as human nature could easily manage. It maybe regarded as a general truth of history that the greatest men don't by any means ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
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... still talking about them, for the incident was both suggestive and exciting, when the strangers were brought in. As I expected, they were seamen, in appearance regular old salts. One was middle-sized, broad built, brawny, and large-limbed—a squat Hercules, with big red whiskers, earrings and a pig-tail. His companion was taller and less sturdy, his black locks hung in ringlets on either side of a swarthy, hairless face, and the arms and hands of both, as also their breasts were ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
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... (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 with a splash in the ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
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... privilege to stand up before this dusky assembly and open up to them the Word of Life. They are all clothed in blankets, some of them highly ornamented with needle -work and pearl buttons. When they enter the building, the men take off the bandannah handkerchiefs which are tied round their heads, and squat all around me. The men sit on one side, and the women on the other, as a rule. This fact is in consequence of the inferior position of the women, and because they are not allowed to attend the meetings ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
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... source of much of his after-success. On November 24, 1832, he writes from the same place, "As for one little toad, I hope it may be new, that it may be christened 'Diabolicus.' Milton must allude to this very individual, when he talks of 'squat like a toad.'" In March, 1834, writing from East Falkland Island, he says, "The whole of the east coast of the southern part of South America has been elevated from the ocean since a period during which mussels have not lost their blue colour." Describing his examination of the central ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
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... from Batavia, and with an even more valuable cargo than that carried by the Haarlem, as I now learned from the chief mate of the latter. But oh, it was weary work to attempt to turn to windward in a light breeze in the deep, bluff-bowed, squat-sterned, Dutch-built Haarlem, after my experience of the smart, lively, swift-sailing British frigate; it was, therefore, with a feeling of the utmost satisfaction that shortly before the end of the second dog-watch I heard the Europa once more booming out her summons to surrender, and saw ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
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... branch—the one on this side," said Legrand. The negro obeyed him promptly, and apparently with but little trouble; ascending higher and higher, until no glimpse of his squat figure could be obtained through the dense foliage which enveloped it. Presently his voice was heard in ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
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... Sprush, spruce. Spunk, a match; a spark; fire, spirit. Spunkie, full of spirit. Spunkie, liquor, spirits. Spunkies, jack-o'-lanterns, will-o'-wisps. Spurtle-blade, the pot-stick. Squatter, to flap. Squattle, to squat; to settle. Stacher, to totter. Staggie, dim. of staig. Staig, a young horse. Stan', stand. Stane, stone. Stan't, stood. Stang, sting. Stank, a moat; a pond. Stap, to stop. Stapple, a stopper. Stark, strong. Starnies, dim. of starn, star. Starns, stars. Startle, to course. ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
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... of laughter behind him suddenly brought Tom back to Earth. He smiled to himself and shook his head, as though reluctant to leave his dream world. He glanced out of the window again, this time down at the quadrangle, and far below he recognized the squat, muscular figure of Warrant Officer Mike McKenny drilling another group of newly arrived cadet candidates. Tom saw the slidewalks begin to fill with boys and men in varicolored uniforms, all released from duty as the day drew to a close. Tonight, Astro, Roger, and he would go to see the latest ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
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... shall tell they summat about what they be, come morning. And your poor old mother, her'll speak, too, what hasn't been let sound her tongue these years gone by. Ah, hern shall know what us do think of they, hern shall squat upon the floor and hear ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
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... made his way, paying no attention to the inert forms scattered here and there. Going up to a blank wall, he manipulated an almost invisible dial set flush with its surface, swung a heavy door aside, and lifted out the Standish—a fearsome weapon. Squat, huge, and heavy, it resembled somewhat an overgrown machine rifle, but one possessing a thick, short telescope, with several opaque condensing lenses and parabolic reflectors. Laboring under the weight of the thing, he strode along corridors and clambered ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
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... of 'real property' may be, I cannot take upon me to say. Whether the land of the valley was the joint property of its inhabitants, or whether it was parcelled out among a certain number of landed proprietors who allowed everybody to 'squat' and 'poach' as much as he or she pleased, I never could ascertain. At any rate, musty parchments and title-deeds there were none on the island; and I am half inclined to believe that its inhabitants hold their broad valleys in fee simple from Nature herself; to have and to hold, so long as ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
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... stallions from the royal stables and clad in the shirts of mail that had been presented to us, though when we were clear of the city we took these off because of the heat, also because that which Bes wore chafed him, being too long for his squat shape. Our goods together with the bags of gold were laden on sumpter horses which were led by my six hunter slaves. Four picked soldiers brought up the rear, mighty men from the King's own bodyguard, and two of the royal ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
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... the familiar name of Crassy; and found him so difficult to keep in domestic captivity, that it was delightful to see him blooming and thriving as he does in Tank No. 1 of the Great Aquarium. His squat build—low and broad—contrasts well with those tall white neighbours of his (Dianthus plumosa), whose faces are like a plume of snowy feathers. All the sea-anemones in this tank have settled themselves on the rocks according ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
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... proof, but it takes a deep fellow To prove it jet-black, and that jet-black is yellow. He offers the true faith to drink in a sieve,— When it reaches your lips there's naught left to believe But a few silly-(syllo-, I mean,)-gisms that squat 'em Like tadpoles, o'erjoyed with the mud ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
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... conch, shifting his course. so as to bring his steps in a roundabout way toward the squat storeroom. "And before you begin there's an extra key to the room under the second packing box to the right. I made it from Roke's own key when I made duplicates of all the keys here. I put it there this morning. In case you should want to get out, you can say ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
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... chessboard, with patches of light from shop windows. Gable Inn, staring at the growing darkness with a single fiery eye, looked like a Rip Van Winkle. It had been old when Chaucer and the knights and ladies of whom he sang were young; and its hoary stunted angles and squat chimney cowls had the grave and impassive aspect proper to great age. It has stood there now for over seven hundred years hoarding a growing store of secrets. It is roughly picturesque in every detail, and its every chamber is a triumph ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
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... 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 ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
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... to reach yonder light crowned summit. The 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 ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
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... stairway was in the back entry which itself opened upon the rear porch. As she came lightly down the stairs Louise saw a squat, square figure standing in the open doorway. It was topped by a man's felt hat and was dressed in a loose, shapeless coat and a scant skirt down to the tops of ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
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... fumble nervously over the title backs. A second man, figure short, squat, red-faced, crowds the erratic scholar. A third. The rain is bringing them in in numbers. These are the basement students of the gargoyle philosophies, the gargoyle sciences, the gargoyle religions. Perpetual motion machine inventors, alchemists ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
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... coachman drove away to the stable. A broad path led through a chestnut avenue to the house, which at first sight had an almost neglected appearance. Casanova's attention was especially attracted by a broken window in the first story. Nor did it escape his notice that the battlements of the squat tower were crumbling in places. But the house door was gracefully carved; and directly he entered the hall it was plain that the interior was carefully kept, and was certainly in far better condition than might have been supposed from the ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
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... miss. So I be doing to the best of the power granted me. Well, I were in this little knuckle of a squat, where old Sally used to say as I went to sleep, and charged the parish for it—a spiteful old ooman, and I done her grave with pleasure, only wishing her had to pay for it; and to prove to her mind that I never goed asleep ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
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... into a cinema star before I'd done with life. I hope she won't be all day raking a few girls together. She's not what you'd call quick. I've misjudged her. Here she comes with half a dozen at least—and, oh, no, Sheila! You don't mean to say you've brought candy? Well, you are a sport! Let's squat under the mimosa tree ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
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... had stood near the old archers, leaning upon a large crossbow and listening to their talk, which had been carried on in that hybrid camp dialect which both nations could understand. He was a squat, bull-necked man, clad in the iron helmet, mail tunic, and woollen gambesson of his class. A jacket with hanging sleeves, slashed with velvet at the neck and wrists, showed that he was a man of some consideration, an under-officer, or file-leader of ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
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... to him to have changed in any way since he had left it. The windows had always been of a grim hideous glass, the stone shape of the place always squat and ugly, and the short flight of steps that led up to the heavy beetling door had always hinted, with their old hard surface, at a surly welcome and a reluctant courtesy. It was all as ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
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... impossible for a man to live honestly, and at the same time comfortably, in outward respects. It will not be worth the while to accumulate property; that would be sure to go again. You must hire or squat somewhere, and raise but a small crop, and eat that soon. You must live within yourself, and depend upon yourself always tucked up and ready for a start, and not have many affairs. A man may grow rich in Turkey ...
— On the Duty of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
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... was tired; he had become uncommunicative, inclined to silence. He did point out to her the squat, truncated mass where the great General slept; called her attention to the river below, where three grey battleships lay. A bugle call from the decks came ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
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... most people have ceased to think of them as marvels. There is a photographer established in every considerable village,—nay, one may not unfrequently see a photographic ambulance standing at the wayside upon some vacant lot where it can squat unchallenged in the midst of burdock and plantain and apple-Peru, or making a long halt in the middle of a common by special ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
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... till next summer. June and July are the best months. I can show you where the birds sit, though. They haven't proper nests, they just squat on the rocks, packed as close together as sardines. It's wonderful to see them. And the noise they make! No, it isn't here, it's over by the chasms; ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
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... civilization were but too visible in her gown of yellow print flounced to the waist and with a tight-fitting bodice. The peasant costume suits the dance far better. Her partner was unworthy of her, and did not perform the squat-and-leap step in proper form. She needed Fomitch, the butler, who had been obliged to stay at home and serve tea; to his regret, no doubt, since we were informed that "he danced as though he had ten devils in his body." As we saw no prospect of any devils ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
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... the first time he was presented to the Emperor, and showing himself very immature in various ways. Curiously enough, when he was taken to the cadet school he was found to be unable to walk for any considerable distance. He had always been made to squat and be carried, and the first thing to be done toward making him a Russian officer was to train him in using his legs. He took an especial fancy to bicycles: in the park attached to the cadet school he became very proficient in the ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
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... judiciously—time 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 ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
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... which he neither sold, wore, nor gave away. His various hosts and hostesses lived in mortal terror during a sojourn of his; for he carried his jewels with him always; and often, whenever the fancy seized him, he would go abruptly to his room, spread a square of cobalt-blue velvet on the floor, squat in his native fashion beside it, and empty his bags of diamonds and rubies and pearls and sapphires and emeralds and turquoises. To him they were beautiful toys. Whenever he was angry, they soothed him; whenever he was happy, they rounded ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
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... about seven feet deep and four feet square lay open to us. At one side of this was a squat, brass-bound wooden box, the lid of which was hinged upwards, with this curious old-fashioned key projecting from the lock. It was furred outside by a thick layer of dust, and damp and worms had eaten ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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... the lush green below Its tortured belly, One, like silver, pale, With fingers closed upon a rope of straw, That bound the Beast, squat neck to hoary tail; Lonely in all that verdure faint and deep, He watched the monster as a ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
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... one think of the 'stuck-on' head of a pheasant which is brought to the table regally adorned with its feathers. Not that she in the least degree resembled a pheasant, having been endowed by nature with a short and squat and masculine figure; but successive mortifications had given her a backward tilt, such as one may observe in trees which have taken root on the very edge of a precipice and are forced to grow backwards ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
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... squat, broad-faced young fellow having for all costume a pair of white drawers was offering the scarf thrown over both his arms, as if they had been sticks, and holding it respectfully as far as possible from his person. Lingard took it from ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
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... 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 finger the earth hereabouts as a ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
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... hot-air flue over which she toasted herself luxuriously, as happy as any chilly mortal could be. Steeped in the warm air, the two girls raised themselves inquisitively and gazed around on everything, the low ceiling with its woodwork panels, the squat pillars, connected by arches from which hung chandeliers, and the pulpit of carved oak; and over the ocean of heads which waved with the rise and fall of the canticle, their eyes wandered towards the dark corners of the aisles, towards the chapels whose gilding faintly gleamed, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
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... impression which entrance upon it in the dusk of the evening brings. There lay the great white Yukon in the middle distance; beyond it the Yukon Flats, snow-covered, desolate, stretched away enormously, hedged here at their beginning by grey, dim hills. Spread out in the foreground were the little, squat, huddling cabins that belonged to no one, with never a light in a window or smoke from a chimney, the untrodden snow drifted against door and porch. It would be hard to imagine a drearier prospect, and one had the feeling that it was a city of the dead rather ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
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... night will collect as much as amounts to many thousands of their little loads. When driftwood is not to be found, they obtain the timber they require from the groves skirting the lake or pond. To do this, they squat on their hams, and rapidly gnaw through the stems of trees from six to twelve or fourteen inches in diameter, with their powerful incisors. Sometimes a tree will not fall prostrate, the boughs being caught by its neighbours. But the beaver is not ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
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... chamber, its groined roof supported by six squat stone pillars. Light came not only from mercurial lamps affixed to the ceiling, but from others suspended above the three rows of benches which ran the ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
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... Mayfield's great squat face wrinkled; the double chin, folding down on the neck, became more ostentatiously double than ever. "Well, I can't admit that," he said, in his suave voice, twirling the string of his eye-glass. "I was Yorke-Bannerman's advocate, you see; and ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
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... German sort, 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 ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
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... A stout squat fellow, rattling with chains, had just taken up the ball of accusation, when Sir Launcelot was startled with the appearance of a woman, whose looks and equipage indicated the most piteous distress. She seemed to be turned of the middle age, was of a lofty carriage, tall, thin, weather-beaten, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
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... each drove a sled, the three other drivers being half-breed Kolyma-Russians, of whom two were of the usual stolid, sulky type. The third, who accompanied me, was a character. A squat little bundle of furs, with beady black eyes twinkling slyly from a face to which incessant cold and bad brandy had imparted the hues of a brilliant sunset. Local rumour gave Mikouline forty years, but he might have been any age, certainly ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
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... of her for his "Maori Sketches and Characters", worked joyously at his romance, and felt great already, and was happy. She had a bed made up temporarily (until the teacher could get a spring mattress for her from town) on the floor in the dining-room, and when she'd made her bed she'd squat on it in front of the fire and sing Maori songs in a soft voice. She'd sing the teacher and his wife, in the next room, to sleep. Then she'd get up and have a feed, ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
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... right, and we were trotted up a long steep hill into action, bullets dropping round, but no one hit. In front are two remarkable kopjes, squat, steep, and flat-topped. We are ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
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