"Squat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... infinitesimal gradations across its mirror surface. The Mayorunas had become quiet. The whites waited in silent suspense for they knew not what. Far out in the forest a jaguar gave his coughing roar at intervals. Little by little the Red Bone men arose from their squat until they stood erect. A tense stillness held both forces. And the shadows crawled on—on—and reached ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... very deep, with a roof showing traces of that delicious clear blue-green which is like a thin cry of joy rising up in the solemn temples of Egypt. A small sphinx keeps watch on the right, just where the guardian stands; this guardian, the gift of the past, squat, even fat, with a very perfect face of a determined and handsome man. In the court, upon a pedestal, stands a big bird, and near it is another bird, or rather half of a bird, leaning forward, and very much defaced. And in this great courtyard there are swarms of ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... office slowly strode old Gideon Batts, fanning himself with his white slouch hat. He was short, fat, and bald; he was bowlegged with a comical squat; his eyes stuck out like the eyes of a swamp frog; his nose was enormous, shapeless, and red. To the Major's family he traced the dimmest line of kinship. During twenty years he had operated a small plantation ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... could be no 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 ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... South America, wherever there are sterile plains, or open dry pasture land. It frequents in pairs or small flocks the most desolate places, where scarcely another living creature can exist. Upon being approached they squat close, and then are very difficult to be distinguished from the ground. When feeding they walk rather slowly, with their legs wide apart. They dust themselves in roads and sandy places, and frequent particular spots, where they may be found day after day: like ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Grafton Islands are very thick inhabited; and Bashee Island hath one Town on it. The Natives of these Islands are short squat People; they are generally round visaged, with low Foreheads, and thick Eye-brows; their Eyes of a hazle colour, and small, yet bigger than the Chinese; short low Noses, and their Lip and Mouths middle proportioned. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... man being in the most critical moments liable to strange associations of idea, which play like meteors across the anguish of his spirit, it chanced that the broad back of the landlord suddenly reminded him of the back of a squat schoolfellow of his at Ostrau, a good-natured baker's son, upon whom, in many a scuffle, he had often practiced the boyish trick of tripping an adversary from behind. Quick as lightning he sprang upon the landlord, and most skillfully ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... is an important personage. He has his cutcherry, or office, where he and his tribe (for there are always numbers of his fellow caste men who help him in his books and accounts) squat on their mat on the ground. Each possesses the instruments of his calling in the shape of a small brass ink-pot, and an oblong box containing a knife, pencil, and several reeds for pens. Each has a bundle of papers ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... the village, and near the church, is a square piece of ground surrounded by houses, and vulgarly called the Plestor. In the midst of this spot stood, in old times, a vast oak, with a short squat body, and huge horizontal arms extending almost to the extremity of the area. This venerable tree, surrounded with stone steps, and seats above them, was the delight of old and young, and a place of much resort in summer evenings; where the former sat in grave debate, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... a wilderness of jagged stumps and ploughed earth; against the yellow sky, the yellow glare of guns that squat like toads in a tangle of wire and piles of brass shell-cases and split wooden boxes. Long rutted roads littered with shell-cases stretching through the wrecked woods in the yellow light; strung alongside of ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... gave but a faint light; both window and door stood open, still there was no draught, and the feeble little flame burned quite still, casting a faint yellow stain on the ceiling like the refection from a buttercup held beneath a chin. These ceilings are far too low! Across the wide, squat window the apple branches fell in black stripes which never stirred. It was too dark to see things clearly. At the foot of the bed was a chest, and there Mrs. Hopgood had sat down, moving her lips ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... presided, under Bird, over both establishments. In my time, Mr. Cook, now or lately a respectable singer and performer at Drury-Lane Theatre, and nephew to Mr. Bird, had succeeded to him. I well remember Bird. He was a squat, corpulent, middle-sized man, with something of the gentleman about him, and that peculiar mild tone—especially while he was inflicting punishment—which is so much more terrible to children than the angriest looks and gestures. Whippings were not frequent; but when they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... two neighbouring and kindred tribes on the coast of German New Guinea, a girl at puberty is secluded for some five or six weeks in an inner part of the house; but she may not sit on the floor, lest her uncleanness should cleave to it, so a log of wood is placed for her to squat on. Moreover, she may not touch the ground with her feet; hence if she is obliged to quit the house for a short time, she is muffled up in mats and walks on two halves of a coconut shell, which are fastened ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... away into the water and sit there wholly unable to rise till digestion takes place. If disturbed, they immediately disgorge and fly off. They nest on the ground and lay one large white egg. When sitting, they are reluctant to leave the nest and will squat there, vomiting evil-smelling, partly digested food and fluid at any intruder. The young, even in the downy stage, ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... remark I lost. The reply came to me in a shrill falsetto. So grotesque was the effect of this treble from a bulk so squat and broad and hairy as the silhouette before me that I ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... hold of Chia Jui, and, extinguishing again the lantern, he brought him out into the court, feeling his way up to the bottom of the steps of the large terrace. "It's safe enough in this nest," he observed, "but just squat down quietly and don't utter a sound; wait until I come ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the lash of his whip in the dust, sometimes quite unconsciously, and sometimes as if a wager depended on the success with which he did it—when, on looking down the street, he observed a little broad, squat man, with a fiery red head, a face almost scaly with freckles, wide projecting cheek-bones, and a nose so thoroughly of the saddle species, that a rule laid across the base of it, immediately between the eyes, would lie close to the whole front of his ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... provided for your comfort in the bathroom is a wooden board, or rack, on which you squat, while you pour water over yourself with a tin pint-pot. It is well to see that no scorpion, or other stinging insect, has hid up in any of the crevices of the board. A very refreshing bath can be secured in this primitive way, ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... shop exceedingly bright. Full in their glare, neatly disposed, were two short-legged tables, a squat stool, ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... hour it is wreathed with women, scores squat upon their mats on the pave, their goods spread before the eyes of ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... the departure of Bard that Sally Fortune awoke. For a step had creaked on the floor, and she looked up to find Steve Nash standing in the centre of the room with the firelight gloomily about him; behind, blocking the door with his squat figure, stood ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... the groups of the peasant pilgrims; the women, with murmuring lips and clasped hands, their strong, deeply-seamed faces outlined with the precision of a Francesco painting against the gray background of a giant mass of wall or the amazing breadth of a vast sea-view; children, squat and chubby, with bulging cheeks starting from the close-fitting French "bonnet"; and the peasant-farmers, mostly of the older varieties, whose stiffened or rheumatic knees and knotty hands made their kneeling real acts of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... in question 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 ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... to express it. 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 outlines; even the squat, ridiculous bronze horse had a certain dignity in ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... her forehead she uttered a deep groan. She was the one who had been deceived, she always was. Boehnke, too, had deceived her. Had he not told her that fly agarics—the orange-red mushrooms with white warts—were very poisonous, and that the devil's toadstool—the brown, squat one which so strongly resembled the boletus edulis—was even more so? He had brought a book with him, and had read it to her secretly in the little garden with the palings all round, where they had stolen ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... what is a perfect nose!—We only know that a short snub nose goes with an over-sympathetic nature, not proud enough; while a long nose derives from the center of the upper will, the thoracic ganglion, our great center of curiosity, and benevolent or objective control. A thick, squat nose is the sensual-sympathetic nose, and the high, arched nose the sensual voluntary nose, having the curve of repudiation, as when we turn up our nose from a bad smell, but also the proud curve of haughtiness and subjective ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... off sharp, and a long shelving run of sandy shingle before we reach the sea; for all the boats are on the upper strand of the beach, above the last high-water mark, and the flow of the tide is scarcely an hour old. There is a short squat cobble, flat-bottomed and of intolerable weight, down near the waters, and its owner makes for it. Another man drives him out seawards, against the constant lift of breaking waves, large enough to be troublesome, small enough to be numerous. ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... vessel was heading straight for me, rather high on the water, broad-beamed, squat, and making her way quietly, like a shadow. The land might have been four or five miles away—I had no means of knowing exactly. It looked like a high black cloud, and purple-gray mists here and there among the ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... the lines of a Venusian gorilla, if you ask me!" snorted McKenny. The short, squat spaceman's eyes twinkled. "I've been hearing some mighty fine things about you three space bongos, Tommy. It's a wonder the Solar Guard didn't give you a unit citation for aiding in the ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... 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 ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... spring's and summer's work of river-driving done; while others lounged upon the grass, or wandered lazily through the village, sporting with the Chinamen, or chaffing the Indian idling in the sun—a garish figure stoically watching the inroads of civilisation. The town itself was squat but amiable: small houses and large huts; the only place of note and dignity, the new town hall, which was greatly overshadowed by the big mill, and even by the two smaller ones flanking ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... festival flippancy. "While I must hurry off my supper so as to buy the fish, and Milly and Leah must sweat in the kitchen, you can squat yourselves down and ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... slept. That one we were enable to tune sharply to. After that we could reach him at any time. He was the commander. We saw him operate the ship, we saw the ship, saw it glide over the barren, rocky surface of that world. We saw other men come in and go out. They were strange men. Short, squat, bulky men. Their arms were short and stocky. But their strength was enormous, unbelievable. We saw them bend solid bars of steel as thick as my arm. With ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... from a scouting expedition against the Indians, 300 miles off. They told me they were usually in the habit of scalping an Indian when they caught him, and that they never spared one, as they were such an untamable and ferocious race. Another habit which they have learned from the Indians is, to squat on their heels in a most peculiar manner. It has an absurd and extraordinary effect to see a quantity of them so squatting in a ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... The passengers squat on furs or other coverings laid flat on the toboggan. The steerer sits behind and controls the direction by a trailing pole and sometimes with ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... out 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
... Cuvier's in the evening, and went first to M. Jullien's, in the Rue de l'Enfer, not far from the Jardin des Plantes, and there we saw one of the most extraordinary of all the extraordinary persons we have seen—a Spaniard, squat, black-haired, black-browed, and black-eyed, with an infernal countenance, who has written the History of the Inquisition, and who related to us how he had been sent en penitence to a monastery by the Inquisition, ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... 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 ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... triumph of ugliness. Oblong books also rule themselves out of our category. A book has still a third element in its proportions, thickness. A very thin book may be beautiful, but a book so thick as to be chunky or squat is as lacking in elegance as the words we apply to it. To err on the side of thickness is easy; to err on the side of thinness is hard, since even a broadside may be a ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... window of an apartment house that upreared its form from amid squat, ignorant stables, there leaned a curious woman. Some laborers, unloading a scow at a dock at the river, paused for a moment and regarded the fight. The engineer of a passive tugboat hung lazily to a railing and watched. Over on the Island, a worm ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... his aunt, that nuncks was a vile bore; and the sacrilegious declaration gave great offence to the diminutive gentleman aforesaid, who hesitated not in pronouncing Timothy Surety destitute of taste and vertu; to which accusation Timothy, rearing his squat form to its utmost altitude, indignantly replied, "that there was not an alderman in the City of London of better taste than himself in the qualities of callipash and callipee, and that if the little gemmen presumed again to asperse ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... 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 permission of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... into the open drawer, and his eyes narrowed with a look of furtive eagerness that did not escape Blake. In a corner of the drawer was a squat black bottle and a tumbler. Ashton lifted them out and poured a half-glassful of whiskey that was thick and ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... 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 be carrying Paris away into the far ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... the street-gutter rabble as in our own; notwithstanding this mixture of blood and races, the diabolical Indian elements are easily recognisable in their wigwams. Then, again, their Indian origin can be traced in many of their social habits; among others, they squat upon the ground differently to the Turk, Arab, and other nationalities, who are pointed to by some writers as being the ancestors of the Gipsies. Their tramping over the hills and plains of India, and exposure to all the changes of ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... it! Both the Hurons and the Iroquois laid in large stocks of fire wood, by forming piles of logs slanted together on end; and in one pile, here, was an opening through which he might squeeze into the center space, there to squat as under a tent. The ground in the village had been scraped bare of snow; ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... there is a high mountain called Neritum, covered with forests; and not far from it there is a group of islands very near to one another—Dulichium, Same, and the wooded island of Zacynthus. It lies squat on the horizon, all highest up in the sea towards the sunset, while the others lie away from it towards dawn. {75} It is a rugged island, but it breeds brave men, and my eyes know none that they better ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... left over from the days when Transbalkania was a backward, feudo-capitalistic power of third class. The National Bank, the new buildings of the Borba and the Politica. And finally, set back a hundred feet from the boulevard, the sullen, squat Ministry ...
— Expediter • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... 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 ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... and down the clean, smart-looking deck of what has been our pleasant floating home during these past four weeks, I suddenly perceive a short, squat pyramid on the shore, standing out oddly enough among the low-roofed houses. If it had only been red instead of gray, it might have passed for the model of the label on Bass's beer—bottles; but, even as it is, I feel ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... at least, of the Aquarium, but I doubt if one in a hundred has heard of the little Scutorium which stands removed from it by a stone's throw, or less; and I am certain that not one in a thousand has ever stooped his head to enter by its shy, squat, fifteenth-century doorway. It is a fact that the very policeman at the entrance to Dean's Yard did not know its name, and the curator assures me that the Post Office has made frequent mistakes in delivering his letters. So my ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and squat by the fire. I'm tired of the table, and prefer the floor for a change. Please don't expect anything extra blood-curdling, for you won't get it, unless you'd like me to romance a little. Where do you want me to begin? All my adventures in all the places I've lived at? That's rather a big order. ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... Casuarinas is a magnificent specimen of a wide-spreading shrub, in form a squat dome, which commemorates the name of a French naturalist—TOURNEFORTIA ARGENTA. The leaves, crowded at the ends of thick branchlets, are covered with soft, silky hairs of a silvery cast, which reflect the sun's rays. It would be gross exaggeration to say that the finely shaped shrub shines ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... anticipating the wily artifices of some old cock, with spurs as long as a dragon's, who will sometimes lead you for a mile through bog, brake, fern, and heather, before the sudden drop of your staunch companion, and a rigidity in all his limbs, satisfy you that you have at last compelled the bird to squat under that wide holly-bush, from whence you kick him up, and feel some little exultation as you bring him down with a snap-shot, having only caught a glimpse of him through the evergreen boughs, as he endeavoured to escape by a rapid flight at ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... apparently addressed by the goose-herd to the man with the crates. It reads: "Hasten thy feet because of the geese! Hearken! thou knowest not the next minute what has been said to thee!" Above, a reis with a stick bids other peasants squat on the ground before addressing the scribe, and he is saying to them: "Sit ye down to talk." The third scene is in another style; on it may be seen Semites bringing offerings of vases of gold, silver, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... 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, ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... dark and sweated fungus. Uncouth children of the earth, whose hour is that which sees the leaf fall, sprang into short-lived being. Black goblins and gray, white goblins and brown, spread weird life abroad. With fleshy gills, squat and lean, fat and thin, bursting through the grass in companies and circles, lurking livid, gigantic and alone on the trunks of forest trees, gemming the rotten bough with crimson, twinkling like topaz on the crooked stems of the furze, battening upon death, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... trains 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 ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... smallest stream of water, and in its pleasure in rolling in the dust. The same strong dislike to cross a stream is common to the camel, which has been domesticated from a very ancient period. Young pigs, though so tame, sometimes squat when frightened, and thus try to conceal themselves even on an open and bare place. Young turkeys, and occasionally even young fowls, when the hen gives the danger-cry, run away and try to hide themselves, like ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... it, Cap'n—ha, good!" cried a squat, ill-looking fellow, whipping out a long knife. "Hung my comrade Jem, a did, so here's a knife shall blind him when ye will, Cap'n, by hookey!" And now he and his fellows began to crowd upon us with evil looks; but they halted suddenly, ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... the key and fitted it to the lock. It turned noisily, and a cold whiff of air struck my face. Gazing round this new chamber, I saw two lines of squat pillars, supporting a low arch'd roof. 'Twas the crypt beneath the chapel, and smelt vilely. A green moisture trickled down the pillars, and dripp'd on ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... and she was remaining for the sake of her unpaid wages. She was a young girl, and pretty for one of her sisterhood, who perpetuate, as a rule, the hard and strenuous lineaments and forms held to hard labor, until they have attained a squat solidity of ungraceful muscle. This little Hungarian Marie was still not overdeveloped muscularly, although one saw her hands with a certain shock after her little, smiling face, which still smiled, despite her wrongs. Nothing could exceed the sweetness of the girl's disposition, although she ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... was everywhere. Fir-trees perfumed the air. Every doorstep was a garden. The courtyards were alive with the squat figures of capped maidens, wreathing and twisting greens and garlands. And in the streets there was such a noise as was never before heard in a city ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... the thin, bearded civillian whose brain conceived the strategy of insurrection; Antonov, unshaven, his collar filthy, drunk with loss of sleep; Krylenko, the squat, wide-faced soldier, always smiling, with his violent gestures and tumbling speech; and Dybenko, the giant bearded sailor with the placid face. These were the men of the hour-and of ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... 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 ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... "birthday present from his affectionate self" at the age of sixteen. An ancient easy chair and a queer old sofa still had the original, slippery, black horsehair off which Petro and Ena had slid as children. Petro had named the sofa "the whale," and the squat chair "the seal." Both shiny, slippery, black things really did resemble sea monsters, and had never lost ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... was here killed. While we were thus safely viewing this battle, and watching the potatoes boil, Lieut. Keech made a remark that amused me, and has remained fresh in my memory. We were just ready to squat around the camp fire and lay to, when he said, "Well boys, we'll have one more belly full anyway." Just about as he finished that sentence, the order came "fall in and march." I took my cup of boiled potatoes ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... 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; ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... seated her fat body, broad and squat, upon a bench beside the door. She had been talking all the afternoon, and had wound herself up to the ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... for the evening was still young; and inspecting the moving crowd at the bar. At the head of the table sat the ex-cowboy and ex-pugilist, Stormy German, his face usually, and now, reddened with liquor—square-shouldered, square-faced and squat; a man harsh-voiced and terse, of iron endurance and with the stubbornness of a mule; next him sat Yankee Robinson, thin-faced and wearing a weatherbeaten yellow beard. And Dutch Henry was there—bony, nervous, eager-eyed, with broken English stories of drought ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... then no need for her to follow the road as far as The Cove, Margaret struck across the downs to her right in the direction of the village, thus saving herself two sides of a triangle. A little grey church with a squat tower, a little grey house that was obviously the parsonage, a row of small cottages, a few isolated ones, and a farm or two made up the village, and Margaret, after wandering up and down the little ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... what you are here to explain!" Fred answered. "No! You can't escape, you hellion! Squat down ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... tumbler is a 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 falls out the ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... enter the portal. Despite the fact that the bride was considered the ugliest girl in the place, she had been duly "robbed" by her bold or possibly blind lover—her features were providentially veiled beneath her nuptial flammeum, and of her squat figure little could be discerned under the gorgeous accoutrements of the occasion. She was ablaze with ornaments and embroidery of gold, on neck and shoulders and wrist; a wide lace collar fell over ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... day in the town, went out immediately afterwards, asked his way to Whitcliffe, and was directed to an electric tram which started from the Town Hall Square, and after running through a district of tall warehouses and squat weaving-sheds, began a long and steady climb to the heights along the town. When he left it, he found himself in a district eminently characteristic of that part of the country. The tram set him down at a cross-roads on a high ridge of land. Beneath him lay Barford, its towers and spires ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... good rooms, also of tables, etc. for their use, and which are peculiar to civilised life, and with which they are associated, yet they naturally verge towards, and cling to aboriginal education, and hence to squat on the sand to eat, to sleep a night in the bush, to have recourse to a Byly-a-duck man for ease in sickness; these to them seem reliefs and enjoyments from these restraints which civilized life entails ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... a decent, respectable-looking body too, this confederate whom I concluded was masquerading as maid. The very opposite of the younger woman (about her more directly), a neatly dressed unassuming person, short and squat in figure, with a broad, plain, and, to the casual observer, honest face, slow in movement and of no doubt sluggish temperament, not likely to be moved or distressed by conscience, neither at the doing or ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... about made up my mind to squat on Hunter's Creek," said Clark, when the boys had saluted him. "Pretty good land on Hunter's, so I am told; no neighbors, and the land has been surveyed off by the Government surveyors. Hunter's Creek? Well, that's about six miles above the fort. It makes into the Republican, and, so they ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... Wednesday the 14th of April 1736. Hall was reprieved, but Wilson and Robertson were left to suffer the extreme penalty of the law. A plan was concocted to enable them to escape out of the Tolbooth, by sawing the iron bars of the window; but Wilson, who is described as a "round, squat man," stuck fast, and before he could be disentangled the guard were alarmed. It is said that Robertson wished to attempt first the escape, and there is little doubt he would have succeeded, but he was prevented by Wilson, who obstinately resolved that he himself ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... sit instead of kneeling Japanese fashion. We place ourselves after having all the guests one after another brought up. We shake hands because their bows are rather impossible and they have adapted themselves to our way. Then we all squat again. Then the pretty waitresses come slithering across the floor, each with a tiny table in her hands. The first is for Papa, the second for me, then the mayor, and so on. The mayor is down at the end of the ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... I whispered, glaring at poor Toon, who stood steering the squat little barge, with an irritatingly complacent look on ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... be, 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 here, I was just making ready to set fire to my pipe, having ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... of a hundred pictures he had seen of just such curiosities—like the junk which clutters the windows of curio dealers. The figure sat cross-legged with its heavy hands folded in its lap. The face was flat and coarse, the lips thick, the nose squat and ugly. Its carved headdress was of an Aztec pattern. The cheek-bones were high, and the chin thick and receding. The girl pressed close to his side as he held the thing in his lap with an odd ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... Cotton had a fine eye to the structure of a story. "Oh, I'm comin' to him, at the right time. Well, as I was sayin', there was a whole swarm o' these fellows came floppin' an' flounderin' onto the platform an' they all squat down in a long row with their wrappers an' shingles on, an' started to play like all possessed on what they call bangjoes ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... plot in partibus. They've small regard for chancel door, Or Buddhist bolts contiguous To lustrous jade or gold galore Adorning idol squat or tall— These be strange gods that we adore— Collector folk are ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... never made use of tables in the good old times. The dastar-khwan is, in reality, both table and table-cloth in one. It is a round piece of cloth or leather spread out on the floor. The food is then arranged thereon, and the company squat round the edge of it, and, after saying Bism-Illah, fall to, with what appetite they may; hence the phrase dastar-khwan par baithna, to sit on, (not at,) the table. The wise critics seem to be thinking of our modern mahogany, which is ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... for it, he brushed a strand of brown hair. Then he saw Grit's body beneath the table. Fury boiled in him, chilled to icy wrath and determination. He put away the coin and hauled out the dog's body into the moonlight. It was limber and still warm. Sandy rose from his squat and swiftly examined the cabin. He discovered a lantern with oil in it, which he lit. The condition of the fire, corroborating other signs, told him that the fighting was long over with, the issue passed on. ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... said the elder of the three, a squat, brown, heavy-faced man, 'is not undeserved, and yet might perchance be dispensed with. I am free to say that our friend attacked you somewhat hastily, and that a little more deference should have been shown by so young a soldier to a ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... occasioned by its fall, hid themselves in the depth of the pool. But no sooner did they see that the huge log continued motionless, than they swam again to the top of the water, dismissed their fears, and came so to despise it as to climb up, and to squat upon it. After some time they began to think themselves ill-treated in the appointment of so inert a Ruler, and sent a second deputation to Jupiter to pray that he would set over them another sovereign. He then gave them an Eel to govern ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... ribbon torn from the green leaf of the ti plant, say three-quarters of an inch to an inch in width by 5 or 6 inches long, and rolled up somewhat after the manner of a lamplighter, so as to form a squat cylinder an inch or more in length. This was compressed to flatten it. Placed between the lips and blown into with proper force, it emits a tone of pure reedlike quality, that varies in pitch, according to the size of the whistle, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... dance the Princess Malio, stiff, thin, and sour, and the old Duchess Scorpa, stolid, ugly, and squat, sat together in a corner of the ballroom—that is to say, the picture ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... it out at 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 straight, silent, swift, ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... grass, some'at like six yeern ago, wi' nothin' to disturb his rest 'ceptin the skeeters. Them same seems nasty bad now. Let's hope we'll git through the night 'ithout bein' clar eat up by 'em. An', talkin' o' eatin', I reckin we'll all be the better o' a bit supper. Arter thet we kin squat down an' ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... horizontally upon them, made one think of the 'stuck-on' head of a pheasant which is brought to the table regally adorned with its feathers. Not that she in the least degree resembled a pheasant, having been endowed by nature with a short and squat and masculine figure; but successive mortifications had given her a backward tilt, such as one may observe in trees which have taken root on the very edge of a precipice and are forced to grow backwards ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... fortunate ones who were invited to the private view of it the night before, when the faithful were dedicating it. They sat on the floor, these Mohammedans, rocking themselves back and forth, and chanting the Koran. I believe the reason nearly all Arabs have crooked legs is because they squat so much. One cannot have straight legs when one uses one's legs to sit down on for hours at a time. They always sit in the sun, too, and that must bake ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... appearance on the top of the little rising where the lane climbed up into a curve of wild-rose hedge and honeysuckle which almost hid the actual road from view. He was not a prepossessing object in the landscape; short and squat, unkempt and dirty, and clad in rough garments which were almost past hanging together, he looked about as uncouth and ugly a customer as one might expect to meet anywhere on a lonely road at nightfall. He carried a large basket on his back, seemingly ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... himself was a 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 that he had discarded powder. Alexyei ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... little to one side of the saddle to rest and looked down from the crest on the sweep of country below. A mile away the railroad made a streak of silver light across the brown range and directly before them stood the squat station-house with red-tiled roof. Just before the house, a slightly broader streak of that gleaming light showed the position of the siding rails. She turned her head towards the outlaws. They were listening to the final directions of their chief, and the ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... accuracy which was the 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 ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... Roberts, trying to speak bravely, but he got up, and, with the others, huddled together at the end of the fo'c's'le, and stared in a bewildered fashion at the sodden face and short, squat figure of our visitor. For his part, having finished his meal, he pushed his plate from him, and, leaning back on the locker, ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... nowadays chiefly dependent upon a large lace works and some collar factories. The church, which stands in the "old town" (turn down Axminster Road), is said to have been erected about 1400, and is a spacious Perp. building without a clerestory. It has a squat W. tower, some good porches (cp. N. porch with Ilminster), and some bold gargoyles. Within note (1) squints, (2) rood-loft stair with external turret, (3) indistinct traces of mural paintings in N. transept, ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... he might have to reckon, and he was surprised to see but four men standing by Fortunio, whilst behind them among the thicker shadows, he dimly made out a woman's figure and, beside her, another man who was short and squat. ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... the squat little thermos flask back in place and restored it to the glove compartment of Jeffries' car. He brushed a few crumbs from the knees of his trousers and settled back in the seat, discovering he no longer felt nearly as tired and washed out ...
— Ham Sandwich • James H. Schmitz
... latter's jaw had sagged open; he dragged a sleeve across his damp forehead while he stood and gazed in a sort of dumb dismay down at those pale and handsome features. Then he chuckled suddenly; his whole squat body shook ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... the fat brewer happened for once not to be resting his tired body in sleep after the fatigues of the day, he would squat down near Listing, who had been a wanderer and a vagabond. He would listen with many a shake of the head to the stories Listing related of his life on the roads, especially of the nights the fine ones, in which one lay on the dry grass beneath the twinkling stars, ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... tag," "stone tag," and "tree tag." They are all simply the game of tag with the additional rule that when a player is in contact with iron, stone, trees, wood, and so on he is safe from being tagged by the one who is "it." The game of "squat tag" is similar, except that to be safe the one pursued must squat quickly on the ground before "it" catches him. In cross tag, "it" must select a victim and continue to run after him until some one runs ahead and crosses his ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... him lay the wide, squat bungalow with its flat roof ornamented by a castellated balustrade of masonry, and supported by tall pillars. The verandah was in darkness but for a hurricane hand lantern ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... 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 ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... were delivered most faithfully to the man I sent for them. The man was about five feet two inches high, and well made; his colour of a light copper; his hair black and short, and with little beard. He had two holes in his under-lip, but no ornaments in them. The woman was short and squat, with a plump round face; wore a deer-skin jacket, with a large hood, and had on wide boots. The teeth of both were black, and seemed as if they had been filed down level with the gums. The woman was punctured from ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... squat square buildings their ship passed, decreasing speed and drifting lower with every moment. The lofty structures that were the nucleus of the strange city loomed closer. Now they were soaring slowly down a wide thoroughfare; and now, at last, they hovered above a great open ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... and in one 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 to be disappointed; he sets to work and gnaws ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... semicircle beyond the temple and now approached a squat building constructed of logs, which Obadiah had pointed out as the jail. A glance satisfied Nathaniel that it was so situated that an admirable view of the proceedings could be obtained from the rear of the structure in which Strang had his office. Several score of people ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... excitement that she could hardly stand. Ridgeway caught her as she staggered from her improvised litter. Presently she grew stronger, and with her companion entered what was apparently a palace among the squat, queerly built houses. ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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 bright ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... play; Bill has no bad notion of bowling, has he?" "Why, no; he does very well for practice; and he is to have half-a-crown if he gets me out." "Bowl at his legs, Bill," said Willingham aside, "he's out, you know, if you hit them." "Nay," said Bill, with a desponding shake of the head, "She squat'n hard on the knee now just, and made'n proper savage, but I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... said a squat, rough little fellow, appearing in the open doorway. 'What do you mean, you brigands, by entering my mill in this fashion? I am sitting reading my paper and smoking my pipe of coltsfoot, as my custom is about this time of the evening, and suddenly, without a word, a man comes ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... belong to the animal which made the footprints. If so, the creature must have been a right loathly monster. Some think him to have been akin to lizards; but the usual opinion is that he was a cousin of frogs and toads. Looking at his hands and other remains, one pictures him to oneself as a short, squat brute, as big as a fat hog, with a head very much the shape of a baboon, very large hands behind and small ones in front, waddling about on the tide flats of a sandy sea, and dragging after him, seemingly, ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... cloth and had an ikon and candles placed upon it. Papa entered just as I did, but by another door: whereupon the priest—a grey-headed old monk with a severe, elderly face—blessed him, and Papa kissed his small, squat, wizened hand. I did ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... cigarette and yawned. The immediate prospect was dull. Savages continued to drift in, to squat and stare, then to move on to the porters' camps. There a lively bartering was going on. From some unsuspected store each porter had drawn forth a few beads, some snuff, a length of wire, or similar treasure; and with them ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... Captain Woodward, short and squat, elderly, burned by forty years of tropic sun, and with the most beautiful liquid brown eyes I ever saw in a man, spoke from a vast experience. The crisscross of scars on his bald pate bespoke a tomahawk intimacy with the black, and of equal intimacy was the advertisement, ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... 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 ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Speke the choice between two of her daughters as a wife. The girls were brought and made to squat in front of him. They had ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... and August, and crocodiles in September. The eggs remain a month or two under the sand where they are laid, and the young come out when the rains have fairly commenced. The canoe-men were quite positive that crocodiles frequently stun men by striking them with their tails, and then squat on them till they are drowned. We once caught a young crocodile, which certainly did use its tail to inflict sharp blows, and led us to conclude that the native opinion is correct. They believed ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... physique was singing in a shrill, nasal voice a pathetic ballad. She sang without expression, bringing her hands with monotonous gestures alternately to her breast. Her squat, matronly figure, beef from the heels up, looked singularly absurd in her short skirt. Her face was excessively over-painted, her mouth good-naturedly large, and her eyes out of their slit-like lids ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... the squat, white house, which in truth looked the reverse of hospitable; but the prospect of a fire being all-powerful at the moment, they turned obediently, and made their way up a worn gravel path, leading to ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... once carried this philosophy to that degree that in a knot of country folks who had a library amongst them, and who, to the honour of their good sense, made me factotum in the business; one of our members, a little, wise-looking, squat, upright, jabbering body of a tailor, I advised him, instead of turning over the leaves, to bind the book on his back.—Johnnie took the hint; and as our meetings were every fourth Saturday, and Pricklouse ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... fetters, than from the rains. The frost scarcely interfered with her movements; indeed, it made exercise more than ever necessary. Forced to seek diligently for her food, she found it in a deserted stubble; there, when the sheep lay sleeping in the bright winter moonlight, she would squat beside them, nibbling the turnips scattered over the field as ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... this adpression of the feathers and apparent shrinking of the body from fear, which Mr. Weir has noticed, has been in the quail and grass-parrakeet.[15] The habit is intelligible in these birds from their being accustomed, when in danger, either to squat on the ground or to sit motionless on a branch, so as to escape detection. Though, with birds, anger may be the chief and commonest cause of the erection of the feathers, it is probable that young cuckoos when looked at in the nest, and a hen with ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... eyes darted curiously to the stranger, who, in Manuel's opinion, looked unpleasantly like a gringo, with his coppery hair waving crisply under his sombrero, and his eyes that were blue as the bay over there to the east. But when Dade introduced him, Jack greeted his squat host with a smile that was disarming in its boyish good humor, and with language as liquidly Spanish as Manuel's best Castilian, which he reserved for his talks with the patron on the porch when the senora and the young ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... in that short interval. He faced not only the fastest thing he had ever seen move, but it was also the stillest. It would come to a dead stop before him—stillness compared to which a post or a wall is mere squat inertia. This lifted head and hood was sustained, elate—having the moveless calm one might imagine at the centre of a solar system. Its outline was mysteriously clear. Often the background was Carlin's own self. The action took place in the period ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... nature. Clear and high, as in some old print, and white and green, the town and shore came to him. The May afternoon was in it, hot and golden, but the town itself was in morning sunlight. A clutter of great houses and little houses, all white, a great church, and a squat dun fort, and about it and in it were green spaces and palm-trees that swayed to a ghostly breeze. And the green ran down to a white beach, and on the beach foamy waves curled like a man's beard. And in the air the town quivered and danced, as ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... Scotland who came behind, rode the Earl of Avondale and his five sons, noble young men, and most unlikely to have sprung from such a stock. James the Gross rode a broad Clydesdale mare, a short, soft unwieldy man, sitting squat on the saddle like a toad astride a roof, and glancing slily sideways out of the pursy ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... know she almost lives on acids and small whey— laces herself by pulleys and often in the hottest noon of 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 School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... shut himself in his room and robbed his bank. It was a squat, cast-iron box, with "A Penny Saved Is A Penny Earned" in raised letters on one side. The only way to open it was to smash it with a crowbar, but it could be emptied. It had to be tilted just so, with a knife blade in the slot to ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... 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, and, as its ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... I have little hasty scribbles—one half done and the other begun. There is a group of women, with waistcloths only, standing on a half-submerged tree trunk in greenish water washing clothes, one stands the others squat, and beyond are cattle and bamboos. Along the side of the track there are wild flowers, creepers, and thorns with little violet flowers, and others of orange vermilion, and every here and there are ant hills, three or four feet high, of reddish soil shaped like rugged Gothic spires or Norman towers. ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... the view on which he took a last look before starting homeward. A faint yellow light in the west showed the links, on which a few figures moving towards the club-house were still visible, the squat martello tower, the lights of Aldsey village, the pale ribbon of sands intersected at intervals by black wooden groynings, the dim and murmuring sea. The wind was bitter from the north, but was at his back when he set out for the Globe. He quickly rattled and clashed ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... the weird sisters in Macbeth upon the pilot's thumb, with curiosity as eager and scarcely less malignant. Mrs. Heukbane was a tall womanshe held the precious epistle up between her eyes and the window. Mrs. Shortcake, a little squat personage, strained and stood on tiptoe to have her share ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... and the buildings on either bank as far as the summit of the Janiculum. And in these gardens of Rome Pierre ever found the same clipped box-shrubs, the same eucalypti with white trunks and pale leaves long like hair, the same ilex-trees squat and dusky, the same giant pines, the same black cypresses, the same marbles whitening amidst tufts of roses, and the same fountains gurgling under mantling ivy. Never did he enjoy more gentle, sorrow-tinged delight than at the Villa of Pope Julius, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola |
