"Squat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... white's white needs no 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 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... flowers was everywhere. Fir-trees perfumed the air. Every doorstep was a garden. The courtyards were alive with the squat figures of capped maidens, wreathing and twisting greens and garlands. And in the streets there was such a noise as was never before heard in a ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... 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 that ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... panting, the moon gleamed down in momentary graciousness. In front, through the lashing rain, they could discern the hillocks that squat, hag-like, round the Devil's Bowl; and lying in its bosom, its white waters, usually so still, ploughed now into a thousand furrows, ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... present an ideal head of a negro, our teachers make him resemble as far as possible the profile of Antinoeus, and then say, 'We have done our utmost; if, nevertheless, we fail to make the negro beautiful, then we ought not to introduce into our pictures such a freak of nature, the squat nose and thick lips, which are so unendurable to the eyes.'" True idealism treats everything after its own kind, making it more intensely itself than it is in the play of nature; the athlete is more heroically an athlete, the negro more vividly a negro. True ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... into gaunt regions of reeking toil. As yet he knew nothing of the realities of industrialism. He saw only the beauty of the great chimneys that rose against the sullen smoke-barred sunsets, and he felt only the romance of the lurid shuddering flares that burst out from squat stacks of brickwork and lit the emptiness of ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... have always got a reason, such as it is. Wants to go and squat at Bathurst. Well, Tom, you are a fool for leaving us, but of course we shan't pay you the compliment of keeping you against your will, shall ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... mast, no rigging, no outside gearing. One squat funnel amidship told that she used steam for some purpose, and out of this funnel black masses of smoke rose slowly in the motionless air. She resembled no ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... stood, for a wonder in this part of town, ran a fairly straight course. At its western foot he could make out through the drifting flakes where a squat structure suggestive of a North River freight dock interrupted the sky line. In his immediate vicinity the street was lined with tall bleak fronts of jobbing houses, all dark and all shuttered. Looking the other way, which would be eastward, ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... gray dust slanting against their sides in slides and drifts. Across the narrowing strip of fertility square cavities in rows showed themselves in the white face of the cliffs. The ruins of a number of squat hovels were ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... lines of the whaler Seabird, which had put in a few days before as the result of a slight collision with a fishing-boat. She was high out of the water and beautifully rigged. A dog ran up and down her decks barking, and a couple of squat figures leaned over ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... Yes, I know she almost lives on acids and small whey; laces herself by pulleys; and often, in the hottest noon in summer, you may see her on a little squat pony, with her hair plaited up behind like a drummer's, and puffing round the ring on ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... down on the sofa. Annie sat in a rocking-chair near by. At her side was a Chinese teapoy, a nest of lacquer tables, and on it stood a small, squat idol. Annie's grandmother had been taken to task by her son-in-law, the Reverend Silas, for harboring a heathen idol, ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... was a big easy-chair moved up within warming distance of the cheery blaze; there were pipes and tobacco within reach of the master's hand; there was the weekly newspaper folded neatly on the mantel, and a tray holding an old-fashioned squat decanter and the necessary glasses—in fact, all the comforts possible and necessary for a man who having at twenty-five given up all hope of wedded life, found himself at fifty ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... have failed in beating his lesson into the mind. Not only was "a little of fictitious narrative judiciously employed," but not a little of picturesque exaggeration and redundant superlatives. Carlyle is an even worse offender in this line. Did he not call Macaulay himself "squat, low-browed, commonplace"—"a poor creature, with his dictionary literature and his saloon arrogance"—"no vision in him"—"will neither see nor do any great thing"?[1] Ruskin, Freeman, Froude, and others ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... of us a few houses rose suddenly above the low coast line, an ugly family party of squat gables and whitewashed walls, with nothing nearer them to westward than the ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... manuscript of his memoir and for my opinion. It was the twilight of an early Washington winter. The lights in the great library, softened with delicate shades, had been turned on. Outside, Sheridan Circle was almost a thing of beauty in its vague outline; even the squat ridiculous bronze horse had a certain ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... spiritual life. But mine being common, I must help to uphold myself by corporal comforts. And age having despoiled me of some of these, I sharpen my appetite for those remaining. Glory, which Pliny and Cicero propose to us, is far from my thoughts. "Glory and rest are things that cannot squat on the same bench." Stay your mind in assured and limited cogitations, wherein it best may please itself, and having gained knowledge of true felicities, enjoy them, and rest satisfied without wishing a further continuance either ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... it. The great parable which represents Him as sending out His summons to the feast in His palace puts the wonderful words in the mouth of the master of the house, after his call by his servants had been refused. 'Go out into the highways and hedges,' beneath which the beggars squat, 'and compel them to come in, that my house may be full.' 'Nature abhors a vacuum,' the old natural philosophers used to say. So does grace; so does God's love. It hates to have His house empty and His provisions unconsumed. And so ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... sat quietly in his lawnchair, puffing contentedly on an expensive briar pipe and making corrections with a fountain pen on a thick sheaf of typewritten manuscript. Around him stretched an expanse of green lawn, dotted here and there with squat cycads that looked like overgrown pineapples; in the distance, screening the big house from the road, stood a row of stately palms, their fronds stirring lightly in the faint, ...
— Suite Mentale • Gordon Randall Garrett
... feet high by one hundred and fifty feet thick at its base, was shaped like a negro's head and face, whereon was stamped a most fiendish and terrifying expression. There was no doubt about it; there were the thick lips, the fat cheeks, and the squat nose standing out with startling clearness against the flaming background. There, too, was the round skull, washed into shape perhaps by thousands of years of wind and weather, and, to complete the resemblance, there was a scrubby growth of weeds or lichen upon it, which against the ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... used to play at cricket In the bye-streets years ago, With a broomstick for a bat, a coat for wicket? Now the Bobbies hunt them so! The old ladies grumble at their skipping; The old gents object to their tip-cat; So they squat midst slums that shine like dirty dripping, Not knowing what the dickens to be at. And the young Town Children, O my brothers, Do you ask them why they stand Making mud-pies, to the horror of their mothers, In their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... Place. Dr. Miles had not returned yet, but they were expecting him every instant. Johnson waited, drumming his fingers on his knees, in a high, dim lit room, the air of which was charged with a faint, sickly smell of ether. The furniture was massive, and the books in the shelves were sombre, and a squat black clock ticked mournfully on the mantelpiece. It told him that it was half-past seven, and that he had been gone an hour and a quarter. Whatever would the women think of him! Every time that a distant door slammed he sprang from his chair in a quiver of eagerness. His ears strained ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the natives. The squat and squalid huts, stuck down upon the earth without any pretence of raised foundation, and jumbled together, corner to side, back to front, any way, as if some wind had blown them there, did not improve on acquaintance. The walls, five feet high, were built of poles some five inches in diameter; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... 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 ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... several purposes. It serves as a kitchen, because in one corner there is a fireplace where the food is cooked. It also serves as a dining-room, because when the meal is ready, mats are spread here, and the inmates squat on the floor to eat their meal. It also serves as a bedroom, and at night the mats for sleeping are spread out, and ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes
... he had a most villainous countenance, what with his native swarthiness and his broken and dented nose, so horridly embellished with a gash of red paint. He was broad and squat and fearfully powerful, being but a bulk of gristly muscle; and when he leaped a gully or a brook, he seemed to strike the earth like a ball of rubber and slightly rebound an the light impact. I have seen a sinewy panther so rebound when hurled ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 appearance Mr. Abbey met ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... beaver usually paused and appeared to look at its surroundings as if choosing a place to squat or sit while cutting it down; but so far as I could tell, he gave no thought as to the direction in which the tree was going to fall. This is true of every beaver which I have seen begin cutting, and I have seen scores. But beavers have individuality, ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... sand here. Clip His clipping feelers hard, and give him all Your hand to gripe at: he'll take care not fall: So,—but with heed, for you are like to slip In stepping on the plank's sea-slime. Your lip— No wonder—curves in mirth at the slow drawl Of the squat creature's legs. We've quite a shine Of waves round us, and here there comes a wind So fresh it must bode us good luck. How long Boatman, for one and sixpence? Line by line The sea comes toward us sun-ridged. Oh! we sinned Taking the crab ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... conversation turned aside and fell upon the Government's forest policy, and Sam Gregg, a squat, wide-mouthed, harsh-voiced individual, cursed the action of Ross Cavanagh the ranger in the district above the Fork. "He thinks he's Secretary of War, but I reckon he won't after I interview him. He can't shuffle my sheep around over the hills ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... occasional bullet scars on the rough red brownstone surface. Green outside shutters lay inertly back from dull leaded panes which reflected metallically the orange glow of the setting sun, and over the door, which was squat and low and level with the pavement, an ancient four-sided lantern, hung from a bracket of rusty black iron, was gathering cobwebs in disuse. All this lay within Mary Louise's field of vision from the summerhouse and yet she saw it not. She was staring abstractedly at a wary robin that ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... the oily sealskin clothes and boots, from their squat, fat figures, which make it hard to distinguish the men from the women, it was easy to declare the nature of their food; besides, like all fish-eating people, they were somewhat troubled by leprosy, but their general health ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... out across the water when the Scarrowmania lay in the Mersey, with her cable hove short, and the last of the flood tide gurgling against her bows. A trumpeting blast of steam swept high aloft from beside her squat funnel, and the splash of the slowly turning paddles of the couple of steam tugs that lay alongside mingled with the din it made. A gangway from one of them led to the Scarrowmania's forward deck, and a stream of frowsy ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... mother, this sort of thing continued. In a long line our company spread over the fields, now one part advancing, then the rest. Sometimes we were flat, sometimes we might squat on cold stones behind a wall, sometimes we were climbing walls and running forward. Discovering that it was wetter below me than above, I hung my poncho at my hip, and when we flopped, fell on it. We struck soft ground and formed in squad columns, then came to a place where the enemy ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... balls of nard and honey, And squat jars of clarid butter, And the cheese from Kurdistan. When you offer Frankish money, Then they scowl and curse and mutter, Deep in Kurdish or Persan For they want your heart out and my hand In ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... apparently from an Indian source. The sal tree (shorea robusta), one of the sacred trees of the Buddhists, was said during the Sung dynasty to be identical with the cassia tree in the moon. The lunar hare is said to squat at the foot of the cassia tree, pounding its drugs for the genii. The cassia tree in the moon is said to be especially visible at mid-autumn, and hence to take a degree at the examinations which are held at this period is described as plucking ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... city, looking out beyond the walls, a squat and stunted pyramid (the burial-place of Caius Cestius) makes an opaque triangle in the moonlight. But, to an English traveller, it serves to mark the grave of Shelley too, whose ashes lie beneath a little garden near it. Nearer still, almost within its shadow, lie the bones of Keats, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... owner was sitting on the side of the stretcher, and Jim Thorpe, his foreman, stood leaning against the table. McLagan's Irish face, his squat figure and powerful head were a combination suggesting tremendous energy and determination, rather than any great mental power, and in this he strongly contrasted with the refined, ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... hardened the poor human clay into some dense commemorative substance. I often pass in the street women whose faces look like memorial medals—idealized images of what they were in the flesh. And the masks of some of the men—those queer tormented Gallic masks, crushed-in and squat and a little satyr-like—look like the bronzes of the Naples Museum, burnt and twisted from their baptism of fire. But none of these faces reveals a personal preoccupation: they are looking, one and all, at France erect on her borders. Even the women who are comparing different ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... of the valley, including the park, with its tall trees marking the horizon; and, beyond, a depression in a wood surmounting a hill, at a distance of some seven or eight hundred yards, stood another tower, squat and in ruins, covered with ivy ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... far away to the eastward rose the first straggling cabins of the town. Creeping toward them down the road rolled a dark squat figure. It grew and spread slowly on the horizon until it became a fat old black woman, hooded and aproned, with great round hips and massive bosom. Her face was heavy and homely until she looked up and lifted the drooping ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Laugh away, and roar and shout Till thy hoarse tongue lolleth out! Bloat thy cheeks, and bulge thine eyes Unto bursting; pelt thy thighs With thy swollen palms, and roar As thou never hast before! Lustier! Wilt thou! Peal on peal! Stiflest? Squat and grind thy heel— Wrestle with thy loins, and then Wheeze thee whiles, and ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... The prodigious mystery in all their proceedings gave them the appearance of the heads of a party, and I never had the least doubt of their being the authors of the 'Gazette Ecclesiastique'. The one, tall, smooth-tongued, and sharping, was named Ferrand; the other, short, squat, a sneerer, and punctilious, was a M. Minard. They called each other cousin. They lodged at Paris with D'Alembert, in the house of his nurse named Madam Rousseau, and had taken at Montmorency a little apartment to pass the summers there. They did everything for themselves, and had neither ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... a tiara of beads, from the centre of which, directly over the forehead, stood a plume of red feathers, and encircling the lower face with a fine large white beard set in a stock or band of beads. We were beckoned to squat alongside Nnanaji, the master of ceremonies, and a large group of high officials outside the porch. Then the thirty-five drums all struck up together in very good harmony; and when their deafening noise was over, a smaller ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... the lamp 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 ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... on, rose skyward the principal trees in the wood, while at the left, above the Brindelle widened into a pool, could be seen long meadows, an entirely green flat sweep of the country, cut by dikes and willow edges like monsters, twisted dwarf-trees, always cut short, and having on their thick squat trunks a quivering tuft of ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... mentioning it. While in this state of eager expectation, a young midshipman, one of the Bruces of Kennet, I think, walked very demurely up to Manning, the boatswain, who was standing all importance at the gangway, and after comically eyeing his squat figure and bronzed countenance, Bruce gently laid hold of one of his whiskers, to which the boatswain good-naturedly submitted, as the youngster was a ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... throughout which the drawn twitch of muscle seemed an accent on every word of ill-omen I had ever spelt out of the alphabet of fear. If my body rested, my brain was an open chamber for any toad of ugliness that listed to "sit at squat" in. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... the town, and is generally enclosed. In it are wooden buildings, or booths of sacking or "tayan" (grass-mats), in which each different trade is gathered, so dividing the bazaar into sections. Between the buildings rows of people squat upon the ground, protecting themselves and the odd assortment of wares they have for sale by screens of coloured cloth or the enormous umbrellas I have already mentioned. Up and down the lane so formed move the would-be purchasers, a motley crowd ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... fitfully at the low overcast while a sullen crowd watched a squat alien ship descend vertically, to finally settle with a flaming belch not far from the first. Similar crowds watched similar landings at nineteen other airports around the world, but the loading was to start first ...
— Alien Offer • Al Sevcik
... theirs. They had badgered France out of Louisiana, and they would badger England out of Canada and the West Indies. In New York and Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore, it was customary to talk of walking into Canada and squat a conquest, as was afterwards carried into effect with regard to Texas. Mr. Dunn, the President of the Canadian government, looked upon the state of feeling in the adjoining republic with suspicion. ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... go down loud tracks Past houses, which are like coffins. On the corners wheelbarrows with bananas squat. Just a bit of shit makes a tough kid happy. The human beasts glide along, completely lost As though on a street, miserably gray and shrill. Workers stream from dilapidated gates. A weary person moves quietly in a round tower. A hearse crawls along the street, ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... confusion of the uncompleted task was somewhat concealed by a rank growth of weeds and grass. This half-hearted attack upon the forest had let the sunlight in. It blazed full upon a cabin in the center of the clearing, a square, squat structure of logs with a roof of poles and dirt. A door and a window faced the creek, a window of tiny panes, a door that stood partly open, sagging forlornly upon ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... erected a shady bower for me to rest under, of leaves and branches, and had fitted up a little bamboo stage, on which to squat cross-legged as they do, or to hang my legs from, if I preferred: after conducting me to this, the parties advanced and piled their cumbrous presents on the ground, bowed, and retired; they were succeeded by the beer-carrier, who plunged a clean drinking-tube to the bottom of ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... already filled the air. Craning her neck to look at the Poissonniere gate, she remained for a time watching the constant stream of men, horses, and carts which flooded down from the heights of Montmartre and La Chapelle, pouring between the two squat octroi lodges. It was like a herd of plodding cattle, an endless throng widened by sudden stoppages into eddies that spilled off the sidewalks into the street, a steady procession of laborers on their ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... 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
... two Indians from the Napo, who were on the way to Quito with the mail—probably half a dozen letters. A strip of cloth around the loins, and a short cape just covering the shoulders, were all their habiliments. We noticed that they never sat down, though a bench was close by them; they would squat for an hour at a time. The day following we took our last horseback ride in South America. It was short, but horrible. Through quagmire and swamp, and down a flight of rocky stairs, in striking imitation of General Putnam's famous ride—over rocks, too, made wondrously slippery by a ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... drew alongside, being propelled by one oar—a method much in vogue with Havana harbormen—and when Monsieur came aboard we saw at once evidences of disappointment. His arms hung listlessly, and his large head drooped forward as if at last its weight had proven too great for the squat body. ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... The word "squat" in Passamaquoddy means fire. Mrs. Brown spells the name of the swamp woman as follows: Squaw-oc-t'moos. The a is very long, and possibly can be ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes
... to cook and have a natural knack for it. Others hate it. If you are one of the former, select a propitious moment to suggest that you will cook, if the rest will wash the dishes and supply the wood and water. Thus you will get first crack at the fire in the chill of morning; and at night you can squat on your heels doing light labor ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... it well into the hedge at the spot indicated by the stoker, filled it with dry grass, rotten sticks, coals out of the engine bunker, and lumps of oily cotton waste. Then he struck and applied a match, saw the flame leap and roar amongst the combustibles, filled the stoker's squat tea-kettle with water from the green barrel, put in a generous handful of Tarawakee tea, and, innocent of refinements in tea-making, set it ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... anything in the shape of man; and will skulk off, whenever they think the latter has any intention to attack them. This, however, is seldom the case, as the prairie hunter does not care to waste a bullet upon them; and they are often permitted to follow, and squat themselves unmolested around the hunter's camp, within reach ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... think of Nijni Novgorod And Jews who never rest; And womenfolk with spade and hod Who slave in Buda-Pest; Of squat and sturdy Japanese Who pound the paddy soil, And as I loaf and smoke at ease They ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... wound down towards the ferry at Potgieter's. Eight curiously proportioned guns (naval 12-pounders), with tiny wheels and thin elongated barrels, were passed in a string, each tied to the tail of a waggon drawn by twenty oxen. The howitzer battery hurried to follow; its short and squat pieces, suggesting a row of venomous toads, made a striking contrast. As the darkness fell the cavalry column started. On all sides men were marching through the night: much important business was toward, which the reader may easily understand by studying the map, but ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... now walked round the Lac d'Amour, and the two friends paused for some time on the other bridge. But no little window opened in the heavens. The great distant tower of the Halles, the enormous campanile of Notre Dame, a squat tower near the pond, the pointed roofs of the Beguinage stood outlined against the milky clouds, like a venerable assembly of old men. Carlino, not knowing what better to do, began discoursing in a loud voice on the most ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... waiting for her, on the little squat, old-fashioned sofa, and Nan went about the room with her match and dotted it with candles. Raven looked after her in her housewifely progress; he was still concerned, still grave over her leaving his house for this. She had on her walking suit, whatever ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... whole to start in quest of food. I have several times seen newly-hatched young in charge of the cock, who made a very good attempt at appearing lame in the plover fashion, in order to draw off the attention of pursuers. The young squat down and remain immovable when too small to run far, but attain a wonderful degree of speed when about the size of common fowls. It can not be asserted that ostriches are polygamous, though they often appear to be so. When caught they are easily ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... that block on Chatham Road. To the left of it was the residence of Mr. Samuel Doppelbrau, secretary of an excellent firm of bathroom-fixture jobbers. His was a comfortable house with no architectural manners whatever; a large wooden box with a squat tower, a broad porch, and glossy paint yellow as a yolk. Babbitt disapproved of Mr. and Mrs. Doppelbrau as "Bohemian." From their house came midnight music and obscene laughter; there were neighborhood rumors of bootlegged whisky and fast motor rides. They furnished Babbitt with many happy ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... very squat, pot-bellied, little old man, with a plump, but agreeable face all of one colour, with sunken lips and very vivacious little eyes beneath lofty eyebrows. He brushed his scanty hair over the back of his head; it was only since the year 1812 ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... been patched where the weather has rotted it; and here and there small spreads of tarpaulin lend their aid in keeping out the snows of winter and the storms of summer. It occupies its place, a queer, squat sentry, standing midway between the cattle ford and the newer log wagon-bridge lower down the river toward its mouth, where it joins the giant Missouri some two hundred miles distant. It backs into the brush fringing the wood-lined river bank, and is dangerously sheltered ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... better off, if you put machines in your factory," said a squat, elderly man, with a surly overhanging brow and a dull ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... interference from any source. It seemed that Seward, Chase, and their friends did not desire a settlement before the election. And Sumner's speech on the "Crime of Kansas" was a challenge to war. He compared Douglas to "the noisome squat and nameless animal whose tongue switched a perpetual stench," and Senator Butler, of South Carolina, a leader of the highest character, was a man who could not open his mouth ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... following the same path that he traversed daily to and from the mill, and which soon brought him out into the level with its soft tufted grass and clumps of squat thorn trees. There was no longer the protecting wood to screen him; but of such there was no need, for the darkness hung about him like the magic mantle of story. Nearing the mill he grew cautious, creeping along with the tread of a stealthy beast, and halting at intervals to listen for ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... up the raft which it would tow all the way up to Ching-Fu. Upon this raft was a long, squat cabin, in and out of which poured incessantly members of China's ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... 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
... points of the slave girls as the dealers offer them for sale. But the Khalifa has returned to his house, and his council have been summoned. The room is small, and the ruler sits cross-legged upon his couch. Before him squat the Emirs and Kadis. Yakub is there, with Ali-Wad-Helu and the Khalifa Sherif. Only the Sheikh-ed-Din is absent, for he is a dissolute youth and much given ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... learn something 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 ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... village, this Agua Fria. Its squat dwellings, with impenetrable adobe walls, had sat out there on the sandy edge of the dry Santa Fe River through many and many a lagging decade; a single trail hardly more than a cart-width across ran through it. A church, mud-walled and ancient, rose above the low ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... suits extended the incredibly straight lines which were plastic hoses filled with air. Very, very gently indeed, the great, bulbous Platform and the squat, flat Moonship came together and touched. They ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... National Bank. He was a large man physically, not so round of body as full and broad. His shoulders and chest were ample. He had a big blond head, with an ample breadth of forehead, which was high and sane-looking. He had a thick, squat nose, which, however, was forceful, and thin, firm, even lips. There was the faintest touch of cynical humor in his hard blue eyes at times; but mostly he was friendly, alert, placid-looking, without seeming in the least ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... battleship, was hoisted and stowed on board. Almost immediately a long line of signal flags fluttered from the squat mast. Smoke began to pour from the funnels. The flags were hauled down and another festoon of them was hoisted in their place. I could see an answering stream of flags fluttering from one of the ships ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... the Potomac. His predecessors, after being whipped by Lee, had invariably retreated to safe distance. But this time as the defeated army took the road of retreat out of the Wilderness, its columns got only as far as the Chancellorsville House crossroad. There the soldiers saw a squat, bearded man, sitting horseback, and drawing on a cigar. As the head of each regiment came abreast him, he silently motioned it to take the right-hand fork—back toward Lee's flank and deeper than ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... first 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 ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... small, squat room lighted by a lantern which stood upon a crudely made table in the corner beyond Bonaparte. There was a board floor well littered with soil and shavings. In another corner stood a singular looking contraption, ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... then rising slowly from a sitting to a standing position. They are told that at the first sign of dizziness they must immediately put their head between their knees so that the head is lower than the heart, or squat/sit down on the floor, I once had a faster who forgot to obey my frequent warnings. About two weeks into a long fast, she got up rapidly from the toilet and felt dizzy. The obvious thing to do was to sit back down on the toilet or lie down ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... as turned his head in response to my voice, and I soon tired of the attempt. The night told me little of who they might be, although they were both in the uniform of the Queen's Rangers, the one called Peter on my right a round, squat figure, and bald-headed, his bare scalp shining oddly when once he removed his cocked hat; the other was an older man, with gray chin beard, and glittering display ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... absolutely dramatic in its spectacular force. You say that there is no architecture in Folkestone. But Folkestone, like other towns, is just as full of architecture as a wood is full of trees. As the train winds on its causeway over the sloping town you perceive below you thousands of squat little homes, neat, tended, respectable, comfortable, prim, at once unostentatious and conceited. Each a separate, clearly-defined entity! Each saying to the others: "Don't look over my wall, and I won't look over yours!" ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... Were Dragon Gods in tissue robes That stood on air with squat, round shoon, Beneath the thin, ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... Khan, Genghis's grandson, fixed his residence definitively in Peking in 1264, and began building the Ta-tu, or Great Residence—the Tartar city of to-day. The Chinese city is oblong; the Tartar city is squat and square and overlaps and dominates the northern walls of the older city. Kublai Khan, by building the Tartar city on the northern edge of the Chinese city and fortifying it with immense strength, may ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... muffling thickness of the dust, and a man made his appearance on the top of the little rising where the lane climbed up into a curve of wild-rose hedge and honeysuckle which almost hid the actual road from view. He was not a prepossessing object in the landscape; short and squat, unkempt and dirty, and clad in rough garments which were almost past hanging together, he looked about as uncouth and ugly a customer as one might expect to meet anywhere on a lonely road at nightfall. ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... recruited in the mountain districts of the Himalayas, in the kingdom of Nepal. They are short and squat in figure, never more than five feet three inches in height, of dark complexion, with deep-set eyes and high cheek-bones denoting their affinity to the Turanian race. Good-humoured and of a cheerful disposition, they have always been ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... midst of a well-watered country. Its roots go deep in search of water, which infiltrates as far as the gorges of the hills, and they absorb it freely, even where drought seems to reign supreme. The heavy, squat, gnarled trunk occasionally attains to colossal dimensions, without ever growing very high. Its rounded masses of compact foliage are so wide-spreading that a single tree in the distance may give the impression of several grouped together; ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... is discovered fitting in a rocker by the stove, reading a newspaper and smoking a blackened clay pipe. He is a man of fifty, heavy-set and round-shouldered, with long muscular arms and swollen-veined, hairy hands. His face is bony and ponderous; his nose short and squat; his mouth large, thick-lipped and harsh; his complexion mottled—red, purple-streaked, and freckled; his hair, short and stubby with a bald spot on the crown. The expression of his small, blue eyes is one of selfish cunning. His voice is loud and hoarse. He wears a flannel shirt, ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... rule of theirs that no one in the presence of the chiefs should ever presume to sit down higher than the chiefs, he would always make a point of attending to it as regarded himself; and once or twice when, on shore in the islands, the chief had chosen to squat down on the ground among the people, he would jocularly leave the seat that had been provided for him, and place himself by the chief's side on the ground. All this was keenly appreciated as significant, but alas! the Loyalty Islanders were not long ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the family, the elder, the young men, the boys, everyone gives a hand to the best of his capacity. When they have finished, the oldest of the company lie down to doze and chew tobacco or sirih, the other men squat themselves about to chat and prepare poisons or make blow-pipes and arrows, whilst the children play and the women ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... and dusting the sand from his clothes he thought he saw a white gleam over against the wall. His light found a squat skeleton sitting there grimacing at him. He touched the skull and it fell to powder. Here was one of the dwarfs—a Neebling—but the bones did not belong to this age; the poor fellow must have ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... children or animals, save half a dozen stray cats and one aged bullfinch—a cock. I remember," she broke off, "an Aunt of mine who lived at Dulwich and kept cactuses. You reached the conservatory through the double drawing-room, and there, on the hot pipes, were dozens of them, ugly, squat, bristly little plants each in a separate pot. Once in a hundred years the Aloe flowered, so my Aunt said. But she died before that happened—" We told her to keep to the point. "Well," she resumed, "when Professor Hobkin was out, I examined his life ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... 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 faintly ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... and put a ring in it—do you see my ring? How do you think I like a hole made in my nose, as if two holes were not enough! Then they tie a rope to the ring, and lead us about all day long just where they please, without a with your leave, or by your leave! And they make us squat down in the mud, and put a great load on our backs, enough to crush a whipper-snapper like you. Groan as we may, it's all of no use, they do what they choose. Man! the very name makes me shiver. Get out, ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... During the Gunner Moon many a one had tried to end his splendid life, just as a worthless wretch of old sought fame by burning the Ephesian wonder of the world. But Redruff was deep in woodcraft. He knew just where to hide, and when to rise on silent wing, and when to squat till overstepped, then rise on thunder wing within a yard to shield himself at once behind some mighty tree-trunk and ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... to the window, and looked out at the tiled roofs and the squat chimney-pots, above which he could catch a glimpse of bursting sky-rockets and the glow of Greek fire from the narrow canyons of the ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... no. I haven't any title to this land you've elected to occupy, although I created it. You see, I'm sort of lord of creation around here. My people call me 'The Laird of Tyee,' and nobody but a stranger would have had the courage to squat on the Sawdust Pile without consulting me. What's your ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... beauty. A costermonger hawked frozen rabbits from a donkey-cart, with a pallid woman following behind to drive away the mangy cats which quarrelled in the road for the oozing blood which dripped from the cart's tail. An Italian woman, swarthy, squat, and intolerably dirty, ground out the "Marseillaise" from a barrel-organ with a shivering monkey capering atop, waving a small Union Jack, and impatiently rattling ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... as on a mirror, and out of the shadow of the hill upon the bay. The sea about him now was running green and glistening, and the red sun-? light was coming down on it like smoke. Only the steeples and towers and glass domes of the town reached up into luminous air. He could see the squat tower of St. George's silhouetted against the dying glory of the sky. Seven years he had been its neighbour, and it had witnessed such happy and such cruel hours. All the joy of work, the sweetness of success, the dreams of greatness, the rosy flushes ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... pair of buffalo horns that had somehow drifted up there from the western prairies, and it was his special business to perform various antics about his totem pole for at least six hours between sunrise and sunset, chanting all the time most dolorous supplications to the squat monster who sat, grinning, at the top. It was "the day of good hunting," and Towaskook and his people worked themselves into exhaustion by the ardour of their prayers that the game of the mountains might ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... the largest 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 ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... her purchases 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 summer ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... the roof of sea-grey slates being pitched less angularly than is usual in this rainy clime. A welcome contrast, the Prior thought it, to the sort of architectural nightmare he came from. He found the structure already more than half- [153] way up, the low squat pillars ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... 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 ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... she become a singer instead of an actress. Now, as always, she rebelled at the idea, and again her vision of a public singer came to her—a very stout blonde lady in a very low-cut gown with a very small waist (the picture had not adapted itself to more modern fashions), placing a fat, squat hand on her capacious bosom, and uttering meaningless syllables that rose to shrieks. Anything but that, she said ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... of, a hard-working, hard-fighting stock. She fell to wondering what her life would have been like had she been born a Chinese woman, or an Italian woman like those she saw, head-shawled or bareheaded, squat, ungainly and swarthy, who carried great loads of driftwood on their heads up from the beach. Then she laughed at her foolishness, remembered Billy and the four-roomed cottage on Pine Street, and went to bed with her mind filled for the hundredth time with ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... without interest. As a child she had read about Indians, and memory returned images both colorful and romantic. From the car window she espied dusty flat barrens, low squat mud houses, and queer-looking little people, children naked or extremely ragged and dirty, women in loose garments with flares of red, and men in white man's garb, slovenly and motley. All these strange individuals stared apathetically ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... ceased to think of them as marvels. There is a photographer established in every considerable village,—nay, one may not unfrequently see a photographic ambulance standing at the wayside upon some vacant lot where it can squat unchallenged in the midst of burdock and plantain and apple-Peru, or making a long halt in the middle of a common by special permission ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... above all, higher and higher yet, up into the firmament, range after range of blue and snow-capped mountains. I was bewildered and amazed, having heard nothing of this great beauty. The town when entered is quite Eastern. The streets are formed of open stalls under the first story, in which squat tailors, cooks, sherbet-vendors and the like, busy at their work or smoking narghilehs. Cloths stretched from house to house keep out the sun. Mules rattle through the crowd; curs yelp between your legs; negroes are as hideous and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... still, some of our nearer neighbours were seen cautiously poking their heads from out their holes and looking cunningly, and at the same time inquisitively, about them. After some time, a dog would emerge from the entrance of his domicile, squat upon his looking-out place, shake ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... church bell rang. Riding beneath the squat tower, all our people pouring forth from our poor houses upon the returned and his captive, the latter had eyes, it seemed to me, but for that bell. A curious, sardonic look of recognition, appraisal, relinquishment, sat in the Indian's face. From wrist ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... said the half-breed, making way politely, and pointing to places on the floor where the visitors were expected to squat. For there was no furniture in that mansion; the fire was kindled in the middle of its one room; the family sat around it on deer and buffalo skins, and the smoke alike of pipe and fire found egress at ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... a Corporal, who a few hours before had complained that we were having no excitement, was saying in a strained, halting voice, that he felt very unwell, that he had hurt his knee, and would like to go back to camp. The other, a small, broad-shouldered, full-chested, squat individual, with a flat nose and a brutal face—the champion light-weight boxer of our unit—implored the Sergeant in whining tones to let him go home. The Sergeant, however, told him to shut up and go on with ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... slowly rose out of his chair, exhibiting a squat, gnarly figure surmounted by a very ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... with a stolen bone, till we are able to dig it up and chew it dry in secret. The devil has no need to blockade or besiege the gate of our ear if he has any of his good things to offer us. The gate that can only be opened from within will open at once of itself if he or any of his newsmongers but squat down for a moment before it. Shame on us, and on all of us, for our ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... saddle with; load, lade, freight; pocket, put up, bag. inhabit &c. (be present) 186; domesticate, colonize; take root, strike root; anchor; cast anchor, come to an anchor; sit down, settle down; settle; take up one's abode, take up one's quarters; plant oneself, establish oneself, locate oneself; squat, perch, hive, se nicher[Fr], bivouac, burrow, get a footing; encamp, pitch one's tent; put up at, put up one's horses at; keep house. endenizen[obs3], naturalize, adopt. put back, replace &c. (restore) 660. Adj. placed &c. v.; situate, posited, ensconced, imbedded, embosomed[obs3], rooted; domesticated; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... operator shut off his permission signal and came forward. He was a squat, heavy-set fellow in wide trousers and soiled white shirt flung open at his thick throat. The sweat streamed from his forehead. This oppressive heat! I had discarded my flying garb in the descent. I wore a shirt, knee-length pants, with ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... interned or not. And outside, beyond the three mile limit that marked the end of American territorial waters, were two good reasons to make the German think well of being interned. They were two cruisers, squat and ugly and vicious in their gray war paint, that watched the entrance to the harbor as you have seen a cat watching a ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... in the dug-out dim, awaiting the ambulance, And the doctor shrugs his shoulders at him, and remarks, "He hasn't a chance." And we squat and smoke at our game of bridge on the glistening, straw-packed floor, And above our oaths we can hear his breath deep-drawn in a kind ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... vine-clad, dove-nested country house, a shelter for the people you love—and always kept for your Master's use. It is something just to have had a man's road to Providence lead past the garden gate. I make acknowledgement. And mine? I think it is like one of those squat, heathen, Satsuma vases, inlaid with distorted figures and symbols and toned in all luridness of color, into which has been tossed a poor sort of flower plucked from any bush the owner happened to pass, which has been salted down in frivolity—or ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... with a start to find the door open, framing the squat figure of a man-servant, a brigand in appearance, French of the Midi; black hair grew low on his forehead; his beetling brows met over sullen shiny eyes which scanned her with a hostile gaze. Diffidently she ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... misgivings he watched the men descend the few loose steps and make for the horses, his own master, the tallest of the men, coming slowly toward him. A moment of gathering reins, then all mounted, and one, a squat, powerfully built man, evidently the leader, turned in a southwesterly direction, riding off in the engulfing darkness, heading away from the river. Seeing this, Pat stepped out after him, pressing close upon the heels of his horse, conscious that the third horse, ridden by a little ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... elevated, spread out like a feather fan. A rabbit of the same weight would have made the trip in about twelve seconds; the squirrel protracted it for more than half a minute," and "landed on a ledge of limestone, where we could see him plainly squat on his hind legs and smooth his ruffled fur, after which he made for the creek with a flourish of his tail, took a good drink, and scampered away ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... he was tempted to give the thing up, he felt so out of breath and exhausted from the heat and his exertions combined. And at such times the miserable bird would squat down on the ground, just as if tempting him to further labor; so once more ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... species of cyclops 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
... on the mountainside, overlooking a valley so deep and wide as to daze the brain of the gazing human, stands a squat building. It seems to have been crushed into the slope by the driving force of the vicious mountain storms to which it is open on three sides. There is no shelter for it. It stands out bravely to sunshine and storm alike with the contemptuous indifference of familiarity. It is a dugout, ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... as well as superintendent of the mine, was this squat little Syrian, Najib, who had once spent two blissfully useless years with an All Nations Show, at Coney Island; and who there had picked up a language which he proudly believed to be English; and which he spoke exclusively ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... 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 through the wood, so that a crop of livid fungi was growing on the inside of it. ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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, ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... little train that runs to my new-found Paradise, rocking and puffing and grumbling along on its narrow-gauge track with its cars labelled like grown-up ones, first, second, and third class; and no two painted the same colour; and its noisy, squat engine like the real ones in the toy-stores, that wind up with a key and go rushing off frantically in tangents. No wonder the train to my lost village is called "Le petit deraillard"—"The little get-off-the-track." And so I say, ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... 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 ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton |
