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More "Portly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a contemporary, "William Tuke hardly reached the middle size, but was erect, portly, and of a firm step. He had a noble forehead, an eagle eye, a commanding voice, and his mien was ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... callosities on his shoulders and elbows because of the tight fit of his command. And Davidson could well afford the smiles he gave us for our chaff. He made lots of money in her. She belonged to a portly Chinaman resembling a mandarin in a picture-book, with goggles and thin drooping moustaches, and as dignified as only a Celestial ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... down the river, exercised all his influence towards the help of the white man's enemies, plotting against the old Rajah and Almayer with a certainty of combination, pointing clearly to a profound knowledge of their most secret affairs. Outwardly friendly, his portly form was often to be seen on Almayer's verandah; his green turban and gold-embroidered jacket shone in the front rank of the decorous throng of Malays coming to greet Lingard on his returns from the ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... with a pair of green spectacles, which entirely concealed the color and expression of his eyes. His clothes were of a most primitive cut, and had probably been black once, but were now rusty and white from long service. His form was portly, a little inclined to corpulency. His hands were most unprofessionally dirty; but this might have been occasioned by contact with the canoe in his passage. On one of his fingers glittered a diamond ring, which, considering the lack of ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... product of extensive travel, varied experiences, close observation, and much reading. His statements, especially those relating to historical and political details, were rarely questioned. We read that he was of somewhat portly habit, above the middle size, strongly made, with the warm complexion of good health, large, attractive eyes, and a firm, full mouth; that, although men no longer chose to be divided sharply by marked distinction of attire, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Babahoyo. This has been a place of deposit for the interior from the earliest times. In the rainy season the whole site is flooded, and only the upper stories are habitable. Cock-fighting seems to be the chief amusement. We breakfasted with the governor, a portly gentleman who kept a little dry-goods store. His excellency, without waiting for a formal introduction, and with a cordiality and courtesy almost confined to the Latin nations, received us into his own house, and honored us with a seat at his private table, spread with the choicest ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... away, sir, at once," cried a portly person among them, advancing upon me, and whom I knew to be the landlord of No.—Wall-street. "These gentlemen, my tenants, cannot stand it any longer; Mr. B—" pointing to the lawyer, "has turned him out of his room, ...
— Bartleby, The Scrivener - A Story of Wall-Street • Herman Melville
... the sidewalk one winter morning, I observed a carriage draw up before a stately mansion; a portly gentleman alight, and take from his ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... a sleek dignitary of the Church of England. Poikilus, when quite himself, wore a mustache, and was sallow, and lean as a weasel; but he shaved and stuffed and colored for the dean. Shovel-hat, portly walk, and green spectacles did the rest. Grandfather Whitehead ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... viands, nutritious and succulent. What swain or yokel had not a meed of praise for the monarch when he beheld this burden of good cheer, and, at the end of each board, elevated a little and garlanded with roses, a rotund and portly cask of wine, with a ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... the men in yellow robes had almost come up to us. It was clear they were boiling over with indignation; but they still did everything decently and in order. One, who was dressed in finer vestments than the rest—a portly person, with the fat, greasy cheeks and drooping flesh of a celibate church dignitary, whom I therefore judged to be the abbot, or chief Lama of the monastery—gave orders to his subordinates in a language which we did not understand. His men obeyed him. In a second they had closed us ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... by a portly man going in the opposite direction, and join again. "We can't go on talking of Utopia," he repeats, "in London.... Up in the mountains—and holiday-time—it was all right. ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... But here,—here was the Big Young Gobbler, the pride and glory of the poultry yard, no longer ruffling it in black and red, but shining in rich golden brown, with strings of nut-brown sausages about his portly breast. Here was cranberry sauce, not in a bowl, but moulded in the wheat-sheaf mould, and glowing like the Great Carbuncle. Here was an Alp of potato, a golden mountain of squash, onions glimmering translucent like moonstones, the jewels of the winter feast, celery tossing pale-green ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... large first-floor room, looking larger by reason of its low ceiling, but well lighted by its three high windows. When I visited it in 1893, the wooden staircase had been replaced by a steep stone-way; but the approach and the ascent were still steep enough to make one wonder how the portly Lemon could, without difficulty or fear of accident, scale the classic heights, and twist his body to the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Laird of Garth, but the pride of the Macgregors and Glengarries who thronged around the royal person, suffered a serious blow when a London alderman entered the circle clothed in a suit of the same tartan. The portly figure and civic dignity of Sir William Curtis gave to the costume too much the appearance of a burlesque to pass unnoticed either by the Sovereign or his loyal admirers, and it was some time before they recovered their gravity. On the 24th, the magistrates ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... at him and slunk out of the store. Hiram turned his back on the whole crowd and waited at the end of the counter for Mr. Schell. The storekeeper was a tall, portly man, with a gray mustache and side-whiskers, ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... move off with your train, male and female, or I will not undertake to save yonder she-saint from the ducking-stool—And as for bearing of malice, my stomach has no room for it; it is," he added, clapping his hand on his portly belly, "too well bumbasted out with straw and buckram—gramercy to them both—they kept out that madcap's dagger as well as a Milan ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... his pride; reading his delight. If a single dark spot clouded the surface of this simple honest life, that shadow fell from the portly form of Mrs. Rachel Kalimann, or Rose Hunyadi, as it was that lady's pleasure now to be called. It would be unjust, however, to the handsome woman, whose buxom proportions served, as it were, to give weight to the establishment, to say that her faults were of a serious nature; she was, at the ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... me, you wrong your judgment, to repute My Gratitude a fault; I have examin'd Your portly carriage, and will now confess It ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... person than the parish constable. It had occurred to me that in a district which was so little populous and so well wooded, a criminal of any intelligence might play hide-and-seek with the authorities for months; and this idea was strengthened by the aspect of the portly constable as he walked by my side with deliberate dignity and turned-out toes. But a few minutes' converse set my heart at rest. These rural criminals are very tame birds, it appeared. If my informant did not immediately lay his hand ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... And when there swept through the gateway of Kilton Hall a most exalted, hatless, rosy-cheeked, dancing-eyed lassie mounted upon a most hilarious steed, the gate-keeper came within an ace of having apoplexy, for she was a portly old body. ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... cheeks, and the hot tears starting to my eyes, I rose and received, rather than returned the offered embrace, and found myself in the capacious arms of one whom I should have taken for an old dowager duchess. On glancing at my grandmother's portly figure and consequential air, I experienced the uncomfortable sensation of utter insignificance—I encountered the gaze of those full, piercing eyes, and felt that I was conquered. Still I resolved to make some struggles for my dignity yet, and not submit until defeat was no longer doubtful. ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... I happened to be passing the same venerable Cathedral, and heard a clang of joyful bells, and beheld a bridal party coming down the steps towards a carriage and four horses, with a portly coachman and two postilions, that waited at the gate. The bridegroom's mien had a sort of careless and kindly English pride; the bride floated along in her white drapery, a creature so nice and delicate that it was a luxury ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... that huge youth who cost him so much and returned him so little. Now and then, at regular periodical intervals, the head of the family would go down to Blackheath to dine and spend the night with his son Joe, the second and the favourite, where there were romping children and a portly, rosy young matron, and loud talk about City dinners, contracts, and estimates. This refreshed him, and he came home with many chuckles over the imperfections of ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... portly wife of a merchant, "begging your pardon, this may be a fat instead of a lean sorrow. Leaves the poor ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... slaughter-room, to see the butcher's establishment; it was as clean and sweet as a kitchen. The little lamb, three days old, was brought out for my amusement, and doubtless pleased its mamma very much by showing off, and saying "baa," like a dutiful child! What a funny party we were, the portly commodore with your small aunty leaning on his arm, he sliding through narrow doors sideways, pulling me after him; then tall grandpa, and our little thin surgeon following in his train! I asked the head steward to tell me how much he cooked ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... name, and the Jebel Ziglb (Zijlb), the cones of pale granite visible from Shuwk; and upon its broad mouth the old settlement stood cheval. A little north of west rises profiled the great Shrr, no longer a ridge with a coping of four horns, but a tall and portly block, from whose summit spring heads and peaks of airy blue-pink. Slightly east of north the twins Naghar and Nughayr, combining to form the "Mountain of the Maker" (Jebel el-Sni'), tower in the shape of a huge ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... a private room in the "Bear," when it was crowded with peers, bullies, rooks, highwaymen, leaders of fashion, waiting-women, and stage stars. The "Bear" was held by great Mrs. Price, a hostess large, shining, portly—a friendly great woman, too magnificent to be fussy, or mean, or spiteful. The "Bear" looked out on the Parade, with its throngs of beaux—veritable beaux, with Beau Nash at their head—wigged, caned, and snuff-boxed, and belles with trains borne by black ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... striking contrast to the active, impatient commander of the vessel. That portly individual, having just finished a cigar which the first lieutenant had presented to him on his arrival on board, threw the fag end of it into the sea, and proceeded leisurely to fill a large-headed German pipe, which was the constant ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... advancement. In recent years Mr. Widener, as the owner of great art galleries and the patron of philanthropic and industrial institutions, has been a national figure of the utmost dignity. Had you dropped into the Spring Garden Market in Philadelphia forty years ago, you would have found a portly gentleman, clad in a white apron, and armed with a cleaver, presiding over a shop decorated with the design—"Peter A. B. Widener, Butcher." He was constantly joking with his customers and visitors, and in the evening he was accustomed ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... amazed at sight of the portly lady, whom I had last seen driving round Central Park. But the twin Skye terriers who tumbled in after her assured me of ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... graced the parlour of a parish priest. The inspector of police boasts of the price he paid for his easy-chair, recently upholstered, at the auction of a departing bank manager, the same mahogany frame having once supported the portly person of an old-time Protestant Archdeacon. It is to be supposed that the furniture originally imported—no one knows how—into Connaught must have been of superlative quality. Articles whose pedigree, so to speak, can be traced for nearly a hundred years are still in daily use, unimpaired ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... manufacture. He took the cloak to the piazza one cold morning, when it instantly became as rigid as sheet-iron. Finding that it stood alone, he placed the hat upon it, and left the articles standing near the front door. Several of his neighbors who passed, seeing a dark and portly figure there, took it for the lord of the mansion, and gave it respectful salutation. The same articles were liable to an objection still more serious. In the sun, even in cool weather, they became sticky, while on a hot day ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... 'That,' he says, 'Mrs. Gamp,' a pinting to a officer-looking gentleman, that a lady with a little basket was a taking care on, 'is another of our party. He's a author too—continivally going up the walley of the Muses, Mrs. Gamp. There,' he says, alluding to a fine looking, portly gentleman, with a face like a amiable full moon, and a short mild gent, with a pleasant smile, 'is two more of our artists, Mrs G, well beknowed at the Royal Academy, as sure as stones is stones, and eggs is eggs. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... answered Harry, brighter for the first time. Relief was come at last, and the study-door closing over the Doctor's portly form was the welcomest sight Harry ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... Cologne, of plate valued at L1,500. One of his most impudent exploits was stealing a watch from Lady Fairfax, that brave woman who had the courage to denounce, from the gallery at Westminster Hall, the persons whom she considered were about to become the murderers of Charles I. "This lady" (and a portly handsome woman she was, to judge by the old portraits), says a pamphlet-writer of the day, "used to go to a lecture on a week-day to Ludgate Church, where one Mr. Jacomb preached, being much followed by the Puritans. Mull Sack, observing ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... said Osmond, seeing a broad portly old man, with grey hair and a golden chain, "this is the Duke of Normandy—I pray you conduct ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... same. He chased short-weight fellows all day and when it came night he piled on all the weight he could just to lift himself out of the under-weight rut of the day's work. Fat kept Jim sociable—I don't mean that he was portly, but he was filled out well over the angles of youth. This was desirable, because a lean bachelor can't live with another lean one. I don't know why, except it's Nature's law. He hyenas in the same cage act the ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... from the next house; Dr. Crealock, rubicund and portly, leaning on his cane, to pass the word of seasonable cheer with his old friend and pastor; and with him his tiny niece to greet the grandchildren of his friend. The Doctor went with his host to the study on the second floor, where, ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... big, immobile, surly. It lined the sidewalks in the vicinity of the station and stared with curious, half-closed eyes at the portly capitalist and his party, which, by the way, was rendered somewhat imposing in size by augmentation in the shape of lawyers from Paris and London, clerks and stenographers from the Paris office, and four plain clothes men who were to see to it that Midas wasn't blown to smithereens by envious anarchists; ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... man,..." that trunk of humours "... that old white-bearded Satan"; the Chief Justice gives us another of his "moist eye, white beard, increasing belly and double chin." Falstaff himself has another: "a goodly portly man, i' faith and a corpulent; of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble carriage." Such physical portraiture alone would convince me that there was a living model for Falstaff. But there are more obvious arguments: the other humorous characters of Shakespeare are infinitely ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... d'Aiguillon was not less to be dreaded than the bite of M. d'Ayen. Yet the duchess dowager has obtained a first-rate reputation for goodness; every one styled her <the good duchesse d'Aiguillon>. And why, do you suppose? Because she was one of those fat, fresh, portly-looking dames of whom you would have said, her very face and figure bespoke the contented goodness of her disposition; for who would ever suspect malice could lurk in so much ? I think I have already told you that this lady expired whilst ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... street. Katy's cheek burned with indignation at this unprovoked assault, and she wished for the power of ten men, that she might punish the ill-natured fellow as he deserved. But it was all for the best, for, in pushing her out of the shop, the clerk threw her against a portly gentleman on the street, whose soft, yielding form alone saved her from being tumbled into the gutter. He showed no disposition to resent the assault upon his obesity, and kindly caught her ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... Edgar Goodfellow—side of him found, it is true, an outlet, but a harmless one. He found it in the genial atmosphere of the Widow Meagher's modest eating-house where he and his new crony, Wilmer, passed many a jolly hour. The widow, an elderly, portly dame, with a kind Irish heart and keen Irish wit, had the power of diffusing a wonderful cheerfulness around her. Her shop was clean, if plain, her oysters were savory, if cheap. Like all women, she petted Edgar ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... variety of food filled half the room, leaving very little space for the guests. The sopranos got in first, ahead even of the amiable hostess, who stopped the whole procession, trying to go abreast through the door with a portly cardinal and a white diplomat, leaving us, the hungry black and white sheep, still wrestling ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... mind the most salubrious spot—and from there he ruled despotically. "That blooming bird fears neither man nor devil," Cook was heard to mutter, after he had embedded his beak in her ankle; and it was quite true. He so terrified Horatio, our portly bull-dog, by pecking at his sensitive kinky tail from behind when he was absent-mindedly lapping water from Daisy's bath, that he never again ventured alone on to the lawn. I say "alone," for he dared ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... made qualified love to most of the good-looking ladies about the Court, and also, perhaps, more pointedly, to some who were not so good-looking, thus gaining much profit and some pleasure. His high-shouldered, portly, personable figure, his handsome face with its close-set narrow eyes, rose before Valerie's mental eye. Her future husband? How absurd, how impossible! And she suddenly laughed a ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... and headache had well-nigh vanished at the prospect of an afternoon spent in the shady woodland paradise. Mrs. Churton, with a prayer in her heart, watched them going away together—two lovely girls; it made her anxious when her eyes rested on the portly green volume her daughter carried, but it struck her as a good augury when she noticed that the younger girl in her white dress had The Pleasures of Hope in ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... Mall in 'darbar', smoking his hookah, and giving orders to his ministers; in another, he is at his devotions; on the third, at his sports, shooting hogs and deer; and on the fourth, at war, with some French officers of distinction figuring before him. He is distinguished by his portly person in all, and by his favourite light-brown dress in three places. At his devotions he is standing all in white before the tutelary god of his house, Hardeo.[15] In various parts, Krishna is represented at his sports with the milkmaids. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... falling head-long down the stone stairs, bolting blindly across the entrance-hall, he fled until (unaware of his portly presence up to the moment when he rebounded from him as a cricket-ball from a net) ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... summer of 1872 a portly gentleman called at Elizur Wright's office on State Street and introduced himself as the president of a well-known Western insurance company. As it was a pleasant day Mr. Wright invited his visitor to Pine Hill, where they could converse to better ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... a goodly figure of a man as he stood there beside his valise. Portly, erect, handsomely dressed, and with something unusually winning in his brown mustache and blue eyes, something scholarly suggested by the pinch-nose glasses, something strong in the repose of the head. He smiled as he saw how unchanged was ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... Nora was a portly woman, with a round face, large forehead, and a little nose which seemed to be always laughing. She was a merry soul; and she used to tell "the children," as Charles and Lucy were called, "Liliputian stories," tales of the ...
— Little Sky-High - The Surprising Doings of Washee-Washee-Wang • Hezekiah Butterworth
... By-the-by I like the Pashas in general. Ali Pasha called me his son, desired his compliments to my mother, and said he was sure I was a man of birth, because I had "small ears and curling hair." He is Pasha of Albania six hundred miles off, where I was in October—a fine portly person. His grandson Mahmout, a little fellow ten years old, with large black eyes as big as pigeon's eggs, and all the gravity of sixty, asked me what I did travelling so ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... a Swede." Jimmy was glad to see the rosy smiling features and portly figure of former Police Commissioner of New York, McGuire. "What can there be in the meeting of a number of prosy old men, Jimmy, that brings a star reporter all the way up here? Or—oh, I see—you're a friend of Professor Brierly, of course, and Brierly's camp is right up the lake ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... presence; he was sitting with a little circle round him, in the further drawing-room, and certainly I never saw a nobler specimen of humanity. I felt myself at once before a hero—not of war and bloodshed, but of peace and civilization; his portly and ample figure, fair hair and delicate complexion, and, above all, the benignant calm of his countenance, told of a character gentle and genial—at peace with himself and all the world; while the exquisite proportion of his chiselled and classic features, the lofty and ample brain, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... hurrying tread; The great doors creaked. The reader fled. Forth came a crowd with muffled laughter, A waft of Bergamot, and after, His Chaplain smirking at his side, My Lord himself in all his pride— A portly shape in stars and lace, With ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... sat in high places in both. The prelates had their swarms of armed retainers, and ruled their flocks with the sword as well as the crosier. The monasteries, with but few exceptions, were the haunts of extravagance and sensuality, instead of the abodes of self-denying virtue and learning. The portly abbot, his black robe edged with costly fur and clasped with a silver girdle, his peaked shoes in the height of the fashion, and wearing a handsomely ornamented dagger or hunting-knife, rode out accompanied by a pack of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... inside. He reported the fact to Herr Skopf, the proprietor, who at once made his way to the second floor where he, too, pounded vigorously upon the door. Receiving no reply he bent to the key hole in an attempt to look through into the room beyond. In so doing, being portly, he lost his balance, which necessitated putting a palm to the floor to maintain his equilibrium. As he did so he felt something soft and thick and wet beneath his fingers. He raised his open palm before his eyes in the dim light ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Dover, and in the steamer there was the most infernally pretty girl. Black, mischievous eyes, with the devil's light in them; hair curly, crispy, frisky, luxuriant, all tossing over her head and shoulders, and an awfully enticing manner. A portly old bloke was with her—her father, I afterward learned. Somehow my hat blew off. She laughed. I laughed. Our eyes met. I made a merry remark. She laughed again; and there we were, introduced. She gave ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... victory. She deftly moved it to where a hurdle would have intervened for her rival in their foot-race, and the preoccupied girl at the table looked up somewhat startled as a red face atop a portly figure met her brown eyes in triumph. The girl glanced at the defeated competitor and took in the situation. The man scowled at Mehitable's umbrella planted victoriously beside its owner and his thin lips expressed his impatience most ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... Epeira fasciata is the handsomest of the Spiders of the South. On her fat belly, a mighty silk-warehouse nearly as large as a hazel-nut, are alternate yellow, black and silver sashes, to which she owes her epithet of Banded. Around that portly abdomen, the eight long legs, with their dark- and ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... MRS. GOOGIN—Portly lady in gaudy dress of calico. Gray hair, parted. Green bows on costume. Face red and lined with gray grease paint. ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... looked up and beheld a man of rather portly figure, with the plain clothes of a Quaker, a broad-brimmed hat, knee-breeches, and buckled shoes. Something in his countenance was familiar. Andrew looked again, and wondered where he had seen that face. It then occurred to him that it was the exact likeness of William Penn. The man locked ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... exceedingly handsome, with a fine person, verging towards the portly, and a sweet countenance, more expressive of refined, easy, careless good-humor, than almost any face I ever saw. His beauty was of too well born and well bred a type to be unpleasantly sensual; but ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... our story begins he had never seen them move, seemed almost to live. They had big, round, good-natured faces, that shone like so much gold. Their necks were slight and graceful, but as they developed downward toward their handsome feet the Andirons grew more portly, until finally they came to look very much like a pair of amiable sea serpents without much length. Tom's uncle said they looked like cats, with sunflowers for heads, swan necks for bodies, and very little of the cat about them save the claws. This description made Tom laugh, but the ...
— Andiron Tales • John Kendrick Bangs
... saith he, "though I see not, mine own self, the Pope and all his Cardinals to lurk in the folds of Dr Meade's white surplice, and I am bound to say his tall, portly figure carrieth it off rarely, yet I do right heartily respect Bess her scruple, and desire to abstain from that which she counteth ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... rang for lights, and his visitors closed the door of the study behind them. Dr. Blundell's backward glance showed him the tall and portly form silhouetted against the window; the last gleam of daylight illuminating the iron-grey hair; the face turned towards the hilltop, where the spires of the skeleton larches were sharply outlined ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... that first "Talk-It-Over" breakfast, and had never since flagged; to Ellis, the harsh, dogged, uncouth evangel, preaching his strange mission of honor; to Wayne, patient, silent, laborious, dependable; to young Denton, a "gentleman unafraid," facing the threats of E.M. Pierce; even to portly Shearson, struggling against such dismal odds for his poor little principle of journalism—to make the paper pay. How could he, their leader, recant his doctrine ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... advocacy of freedom, with a look of sharp concentration in keeping with an intellect keen as a Damascus blade, closely watched the proceedings through his spectacles, opening his mouth only to speak directly to the purpose. The portly form of Dr. Bartholomew Russell, the beloved physician, from that beautiful land of plenty and peace which Bayard Taylor has described in his Story of Kennett, was not to be overlooked. Abolitionist in heart and soul, his house was known as the shelter of runaway slaves, and no sportsman ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... fat man cannot work at physical labor, if he is not fitted for romance, if he is incapacitated by his love of the good things of life for severe mental labor, what can he do to fill his purse, supply his table, clothe his portly person, and surround himself with the elegancies and luxuries which are so dear ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... contrasting my own puny form with his, I laboured under a deep consciousness of personal insignificance. From being five feet eight, I seemed to shrink to five feet one; from weighing ten stones, I suddenly fell to seven and a half; while my portly rival sat opposite to me, measuring at least a foot taller than myself, and weighing good thirty stones, jockey weight. If any little fellow like me thinks of standing well with his mistress, let him never appear ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... described the widow for us. He says she was "lively in disposition," and he also uses the words "buxom" and "portly." I do not like these expressions—they suggest too much, so I will none of them. I would rather refer to her as lissome and willowy, and tell how her sorrow for the dead wrapped her 'round with weeds and becoming sable—but in the interests ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... upper deck of the small steamer, and looking, somehow, very much out of place there, was a tall but portly young gentleman, in a bowler hat and travelling coat and a monocle, whose face showed none of the usual symptoms of the Sark lover. To judge from his expression, the little island impressed him anything but favourably. It offered him none of the relaxations and amusements to which he was ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... you! Yet the winter sky looked gray and dumb when he passed the window, and the fire-light broke fiercest against his bluff figure going to and fro. No matter; something there that would have warmed your heart to him: something genial, careless, big-natured, from the loose red hair to the indolent, portly stride. "Who knows? A comfortable, true-hearted, merry clergyman,—a jolly farmer, with open house, and a bit of good racing-stock in the stable,—if bigotry in his boyhood, and this woman, had not crossed him. They had crossed him: there was not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... saw Miss Bacon was in London, where she had lodgings in Spring Street, Sussex Gardens, at the house of a grocer, a portly, middle-aged, civil, and friendly man, who, as well as his wife, appeared to feel a personal kindness towards their lodger. I was ushered up two (and I rather believe three) pair of stairs into a parlor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... typifying their social superiority, was a group of the magnates of Stockbridge, in the stately dress of gentlemen of the olden time, their three-cornered hats resting upon powdered wigs, and long silk hose revealing the goodly proportions of their calves. Upon the piazza sits a short, portly gentleman, with bushy black eyebrows and a severe expression of countenance. Although a short man he has a way of holding his neck stiff, with the chin well out, and looking downward from beneath his eyelids, upon ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... Out of the way, fat face, or we'll take the coat off your back." A portly Frenchman leaped into safety with a scream. "That's the style. For-rard! Fill the fife, dear heart, fill the blinkin' fife; there's a cyciclist ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... silently toward them; Master Freddie took off his hat and handed it to him, and then, letting go of Jurgis' arm, tried to get out of his overcoat. After two or three attempts he accomplished this, with the lackey's help, and meantime a second man had approached, a tall and portly personage, solemn as an executioner. He bore straight down upon Jurgis, who shrank away nervously; he seized him by the arm without a word, and started toward the door with him. Then suddenly came Master Freddie's voice, "Hamilton! My fren' will ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... struggled with the problem, he lost all track of time. A door swung open and high-heeled boots clumped on the floor tiles. Tom looked up and saw the portly, aproned ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... more. He hurried down through the main street and past the house of Don Mario. The door stood open, and he could see the portly figure of the official outlined against the back wall. It was evident that Diego was not there. He returned in perplexity to his house and sat far into the night, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... completely disappointed in our hopes of finding a fine country. Small plains opened on both sides of the valley, surrounded by Bricklow scrub, and with patches of Bricklow scattered over them, in which the Bottle-tree frequently made its portly appearance. A large flight of Wonga Wonga pigeons were feeding on the seeds of various species of Acacia; we shot two of them. No water was to be found in an extent of fifteen miles. The noisy call of the laughing Jackass (Dacclo gigantea) made me frequently ride back and examine more ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... was that of a man of portly figure, rather under than above the middle height, with a handsome, pleasant face. He had a fine powerful voice, which could be heard at the furthest extremity of his gatherings, which often numbered several ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... with ROMANCE of every sort and kind. I'll write it as the Gestours wrote of old, In prose, blank-verse, and rhyme it shall be told. And GILLIAN— Some day perhaps, my dear, when you are grown A portly dame with children of your own You'll gather all your troop about your knee And read to them this Geste I made ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... had filled up. It was one frequented by young artists, musicians, journalists and the clingers to the rather frayed fringes of the Arts. From time to time heads were turned to look at Romarin's portly and handsome figure, which the Press, the Regent Street photographic establishments, and the Academy Supplements had made well known. The plump young Frenchwoman within the glazed cash office near the door, at whom ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... and a complexion of perfect pink and white. The number of different costumes which she managed to don in two days filled him with amazement and gave her person an ever-varying charm and interest. She appeared always accompanied by a very placid-looking and portly woman, who was evidently her mother, and a tall, cadaverous sick man, whose indifferent and pettish attitude toward her seemed to indicate that he was either a brother or an uncle, for Ramon felt sure that she was not married. She acquired no male attendants, but sat most of the time very ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... as frequently happens, during the busier months of the year, in considerable commercial centres like Salem. They both have grand old recollections to fall back upon,—times when they looked forward to commercial greatness, and when the portly gentlemen in cocked hats, who built their now decaying wharves and sent out their ships all over the world, dreamed that their fast-growing port was to be the Tyre or the Carthage of the rich British Colony. Great houses, like that once lived in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... let me hear your reasons for believing that Hamlet ought to be a portly gentleman. I see you are ready ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... was to come next, when lo! one of the thickets of the Tomhan beside us opened its interlaced and twisted branches, and out stepped the likeness of Mr. Clark, attired like a conjurer, and armed with a rod. His portly bulk was enwrapped in a voluminous scarf of changing-coloured silk, that, when it caught the light in one direction, exhibited the deep scarlet of a cardinal's mantle, and presented, when it caught it in another, the sober tinge of our Presbyterian blue. Like the cloak of Asmodeus, it was covered ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... taken from the poorest of the town; And in one fashion equally were drest Those beadsmen all, in black and trailing gown. A hundred pages followed them, who prest A hundred puissant steeds, for warfare bown; And by those pages backed, the portly steeds Went, sweeping wide the ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... wouldn't," broke in Barney. "Don't be a fool, Jerry, this man is no detective," and Barney fastened the star to the vest which encircled the portly ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... water-jumps, after the fashion of the midshipmen on a certain second visit to the lake. How the Negroes grinned delight and surprise at the vagaries of English lads—a species of animal altogether new to them. And how they grinned still more when certain staid and portly dignitaries caught the infection, and proved, by more than one good leap, that they too had been English ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... for me, but the ranker, the tramp of the road, The slave with the sack on his shoulders pricked on with the goad, The man with too weighty a burden, too weary a load. "Others may sing of the wine and the wealth, and the mirth, The portly presence of potentates goodly in girth; Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust, and the scum of ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... four made an odd group as they stood there in the firelit gloom of that November day—the lovely young Queen, so frail and wistful in her high-backed chair; the stalwart, arrogant Bothwell, magnificent in a doublet of peach-coloured velvet that tapered to a golden girdle; Argyll, portly and sober in a rich suit of black; and Maitland of Lethington, lean and crafty of face, in a long furred gown that ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... is the story of two cousins, Dicky and Emmeline Lestrange, stranded on a remote island with a beautiful lagoon. As children, they are cared for by Paddy Button, a portly sailor who drinks himself to death after only two and a half years in paradise. Frightened and confused by the man's gruesome corpse, the children flee to another part of Palm Tree Island. Over a period of five years, they grow up and eventually fall in love. Sex and birth are as ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... and gathered it up in silence. He was a portly, antique gentleman, with a fine taste for scandal in its proper place, but disliked conversation ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... n't;" and with great pride Tom produced a portly pocket-book stuffed with business-like documents of a most imposing appearance, opened a private compartment, and took out a worn-looking paper, unfolded it carefully, and displayed a small brown object which gave ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... another; but the instant a skirt fluttered on the horizon that soft something inside of him appeared, as he expressed it, "to give way." Apart from their afflictions, he had an eye, he used to boast, for but one woman in the world, and she, thank God, was his wife. Handsome, portly, full-blooded, and slightly overfed, he had let Pussy twine him about her little finger ever since the afternoon when he had first seen her, small, trim, and with "a way with her," at the age ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... little group of officers issues from the battalion commander's tent. Foremost among them, in loose flapping raiment and broad-brimmed hat and green goggles, the rotund and portly shape of ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... war when there were many important matters to be decided and the Commander was needed everywhere, she came straight from a conference in Washington to a large hotel in one of the great western cities where she had an appointment to speak that night. At the revolving door of the hotel stood a portly servitor in house uniform who was most kind and noticeably attentive to her whenever she entered or went out, and was constantly giving her some pointed little attention to draw her notice. Finally, she stopped for a moment to thank him, and he immediately became most flattering, telling her he ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... the voices came into view, and the expression on all the faces changed to bewildered amazement. Instead of the masked bandit which they had half expected to see there was a very portly and very excited gentleman and with him was a conductor, not so ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... his frail shoulders bowed forward, his head advanced, his eyes intently watching her moving lips. She could not abate that frozen smile of his. Brantome, his portly body thrown back, his white mane and long mustaches shimmering like spun glass in the candle light, seemed still to wear on his tragical old face a look of uneasiness. She had the feeling of sitting before two judges who were weighing not only her words, ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... that the first interruption to her meditations came from a visiter who did not intend to be a guest. No less than Gov. Powder; a portly, gentlemanly, somewhat imposing personage, who was less known to society than were his wife and daughters. However, without wife and daughters, ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... down while you were in your cubicle," remarked Carrados casually. "The first took the lift. I imagine that he was a middle-aged, rather portly man. He carried a stick, wore a silk hat, and used spectacles for close sight. The other came by the stairway. I infer that he arrived at the top immediately after the lift had gone. He ran down the steps, so that the two were admitted at ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... parallel between Phidias' statue of the Olympian Zeus and Coles' truss-manufactory; Sir William Harcourt's attempt to "develop a system of unsectarian religion from the Life of Mr. Pickwick;" the "portly jeweller from Cheapside," with his "passionate, absorbing, almost blood-thirsty clinging to life;" the grandiose war-correspondence of the Times, and "old Russell's guns getting a little honey-combed;" Lord Lumpington's subjection to "the ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... was about six feet in height; his person, which was originally slender, afterwards became portly. He was of a fair complexion, and his countenance generally wore a smile. His manners were pleasing, and he cherished a keen relish for congenial society. In 1815 he published a thin duodecimo volume of verses, entitled "Poems, chiefly Lyrical;" but the majority ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the driver Godfrey followed his host to the floor above. Petrovytch was a portly man, with a pleasant but by no means good-looking face. "Wife," he said as he entered the sitting-room, "this is Godfrey Bullen; I will leave him in your hands for the present, as I have some business that I must complete before ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... replied Camille. "I do love him—far too much for my own peace of mind. He may, perhaps, have had a passing fancy for you; for you are, you know, enchantingly fair, while I am as black as a crow; you are slim and willowy, while I have a portly dignity; in short, you are young!—that's the final word, and you have not spared it to me. You have abused your advantages as a woman against me. I have done my best to prevent what has now happened. However little of a woman you may think me, I am woman ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... The portly client puffed out his chest with an appearance of some little pride, and pulled a dirty and wrinkled newspaper from the inside pocket of his great-coat. As he glanced down the advertising column, with his head thrust forward, and the paper flattened out upon his ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... generally, that I was that Head and Chief; and not the radiant embodiment of good humour who sat beside me in the person of a French Courier—best of servants and most beaming of men! Truth to say, he looked a great deal more patriarchal than I, who, in the shadow of his portly presence, dwindled down to no ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... like a live thing between them. Hilary whirled in a kaleidoscope of emotion. Was this wasted, tortured being the portly, dignified President of the United States who had bade him Godspeed at the start of his tremendous journey five years before? His pitying eyes searched the lineaments of the poor wretch. There was no doubt of it now; ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... broad as ony spade," that flowed from his throat in Homeric curls, were touched with the first frost. He had a fine color, and his eyes, as keen as they were kind, twinkled restlessly above the wholesome russet-red of his cheeks. His portly frame was clad in those Scotch tweeds which had not yet displaced the traditional broadcloth with us in the West, though I had sent to New York for a rough suit, and so felt myself not quite unworthy to meet a man fresh from the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... was a tall and portly person, with a red face, red whiskers, and a tightly buttoned frock-coat, which more expressed than hid his goodly and prominent proportions. He bowed, and Merton invited him to be seated. It struck Merton as a singular ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... was a familiar one in the card-room of the Rag and Bobtail, at the bow-window of the Jeunesse Doree. Tall and pompous, with a portly frame and a puffy clean-shaven face which peered over an abnormally high collar and old-fashioned linen cravat, he stood as a very type and emblem of staid middle-aged respectability. The major's hat was always of the glossiest, the major's coat was without a ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... overwhelmed by awful dizziness, which numbed and paralyzed all sensation. Don Marzio, in form an athlete, in heart a lion, but a man of sudden, sanguine temperament, bustled up and darted out of the room with the ease of a man never burdened with a wife, with kith or kin. Donna Betta, a portly matron, also rose instinctively; but I—I never could account for the odd freak—laid hold of her arm, bidding her stay. The roar of eight hundred houses—or how many more can there be in Aquila?—all reeling and quaking, the yells of ten ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... by the foliage of a tree which stood near, and whose leafy boughs drooped over the pile of stones, as if to protect the rude fane from the decay to which it was rapidly hastening. The image itself was nothing more than a grotesquely shaped log, carved in the likeness of a portly naked man with the arms clasped over the head, the jaws thrown wide apart, and its thick shapeless legs bowed into an arch. It was much decayed. The lower part was overgrown with a bright silky moss. Thin spears of grass sprouted from the distended mouth, ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... former one dull evening, in the dullest of all his dull humours, and of such the lonely bachelor had many, he sighed, kicked his shins, and looked into his books; but as that was like gazing upon a very ugly face, he shut them again, and rang the bell. It was answered by a portly dame, whose age might be about some four or five and forty, whose complexion was fair, whose chubby cheeks were brilliantly rosy, and whose black eyes were so vividly lustrous, that one might have fancied the delicate cap-border near them, in danger from their fire. Over her full-formed bust, she ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... High, Low, and Broad Church—thinks it his or her daily duty to decide, if the formula—Quamdiu se bene gesserit—has been duly complied with. Perhaps foreign air and warmer climates develop, like a hot-bed, our innate instinct of destructiveness. Look at portly respectable fathers of families—householders who, at home, have accepted their spiritual position without a murmur for a quarter of a century, roused to revolt by no vexed question of copes, candles, or church-rates—even ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... news to send you, but the massacre of St. Cas,(959) not agreeable enough for a letter, I stayed till I had something to send you, and behold a book! I have delivered to portly old Richard, your ancient nurse, the new produce of the Strawberry press. You know that the wife of Bath is gone to maunder at St. Peter, and before he could hobble to the gate, my Lady Burlington, cursing and blaspheming, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... equal rapidity, but with better fortune, I had but just time to spring into the street, at the instant when the old lady, writhing herself out of the window, which was now uppermost, was about to trust her portly person to chance. I caught her as she clung to the carriage with her many-braceleted arms, and was almost strangled by the vigour of her involuntary embrace as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... Foster had been ready to "chaff" Dick Lee, or even Dab Kinzer, he knew enough to speak respectfully to the portly and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... moment Tomlinson himself, imperturbable and portly, announced that dinner was served. The three descended the stairs, chatting lightly about the musical comedy witnessed overnight. It was no new revelation to Theydon that truth should prove stranger than fiction, but the trite phrase was fast assuming a fresh and sinister personal significance. ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... yawned. Then he glanced round the barrack-room with an air of weariness. Sergeant Colgan, his tunic unbuttoned, his grey flannel shirt open at the neck, dozed uncomfortably in a corner. Moriarty looked at him enviously. The sergeant was much the older man of the two, and was besides of portly figure. Sleep came easily to him under the most unpromising circumstances. Moriarty was not more than twenty four years of age. He was mentally and physically an active man. Before he went to work on "The Minstrel Boy" he had wooed sleep ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... who had to do with all the letting and taking, overhauling and repairing, of most of the habitations in our neighbourhood. He was a portly, oily personage; one who clipped his English royally, and walked, through the effects of bunions, I believe— although some mistook it for gout, and gave him the credit of being afflicted with that painful but aristocratic malady—as if he were continuously on pattens, or wore ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... trio made their entry. Foremost was the mistress of the mansion, Mrs. Judith Justitia Pimble. What a puny, trembling thing appeared the husband, as he stood there like a galvanized mummy in presence of that tall, portly woman, with her broad shoulders and commanding aspect! Her first act was to smother the fire; her second, to throw open the windows; her third, to ensconce herself in her liege lord's easy-chair, and bid her guests lay aside ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... their bosoms, and looked as if they were attired at a very small expense. Only the general—the captain-general (Pooch, they told us, was his name: I know not how 'tis written in Spanish)—was well got up, with a smart hat, a real feather, huge stars glittering on his portly chest, and tights and boots of the first order. Presently, after a good deal of trumpeting, the little men marched off the place, Pooch and his staff coming into the very inn in which we were ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of old with the habits of the Euclid House, Theodore chose next day the hour when he judged that Tommy would be most at leisure, and sought him out. The landlord was a trifle grayer, decidedly more portly, but was in other respects the same smooth-tongued, affable host that he was when Tode Mall ran hither and thither to do his bidding. Theodore attempted nothing with him further than to beg a few minutes' chat with Tommy. He was directed to the identical little room with its patch ...
— Three People • Pansy
... brain immediately raised up the portly figure of his tutor before him, raising his eyebrows, and questioning him about why he was there; but these thoughts were chased away directly after, as he came to an opening in the trees, through which he could look right away to where the river went ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... waiting for us outside his shop door, and hastened to open the carriage door himself. He was a round-faced, portly little man, with a short black moustache, black eyebrows, and close-cropped, thick, flour-white hair. The good fellow helped grandmother to alight from the carriage: shook hands with Lorand, and began to speak to them in German: when I alighted, he put his ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... happy to say that such is the case," said a voice from the oak staircase, and down it was slowly proceeding Lord Erymanth, as trim, and portly, and well brushed-up as if he had arrived ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... good night and ascended to the little room prepared for me. There was a great pincushion on the sprigged and portly toilet table, and I laboured till the constellations had changed beyond my window, in printing from a box of tiny pins upon that lavendered mound, ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... called "The Gables," and was an offshoot of a former ancient school connected with the famous parish church. In my time this "academy" was carried on as a private venture by a certain James Anthony Bown, a portly old ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... on the hearth rug. Mrs. Travers was in a chair, a portly woman with a not unkindly face, but the brusque manner many Englishwomen acquire after forty. She held Sara Lee's hand and gave her a complete if ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... He appeared suddenly at a door of my ateliers on the flying ground at Mineola, very tall, very soigne, smiling in the way he had that showed all his strong, square teeth as he recognized me in conversation, with my faithful mechanician, Georges. This latter, grown portly and nervous since marrying a Montmartre shopkeeper, I have since promoted to ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... happiness to insure before thinking of the possible injury to his non-existent parishioners. If he was doing Whippingham Parva or Norton-cum-Sutton out of an eloquent and valuable potential rector, if he was depriving the Church in the next half-century of a dignified and portly prospective archdeacon, he is at least making his father's last days brighter and more comfortable than his early ones had ever been. And then, was not music, too, in its own way, a service, a liturgy, a worship? Surely he could do higher good to men's souls—as they call them—to ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... he went into the house and came back immediately bringing a lamp in one hand—for it had grown pretty dark—and a familiar, portly, blue-bound book in the other. While he ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... it is Black Wings!" barked Stubby, while Button meowed, "You have grown portly since I saw you last, and are much more eatable looking than you were then, though you looked very good to me that day I was starving and tried to catch you to eat." And they all laughed, for once Button had nearly caught Black Wings, but he proved too quick for the half starved cat and ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery
... lucre) with her, without avail: it was the grandes vacances, the ladies were out, M. Heger was engaged, we could not be gratified,—unless, indeed, we were patrons of the school. At this juncture a portly, ruddy-faced lady of middle age and most courteous of speech and manner appeared, and, addressing us in faultless English, introduced herself as Mademoiselle Heger, co-directress of the pensionnat, and "wholly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... of the people, and naked to the waist, being in the king's presence. His appearance was so much altered from what it had been the day before, that I had some difficulty to recollect him. He appeared now very lusty, and had a most portly paunch, which it was impossible to discern under the long spacious robes of war. His hair was of a fine silvery grey; and his countenance was the most engaging and truly good-natured which I ever beheld in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... Berry. "For-r-a-r-d! Out of the way, fat face, or we'll take the coat off your back." A portly Frenchman leaped into safety with a scream. "That's the style. For-rard! Fill the fife, dear heart, fill the blinkin' fife; there's a ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... the weight of every variety of food filled half the room, leaving very little space for the guests. The sopranos got in first, ahead even of the amiable hostess, who stopped the whole procession, trying to go abreast through the door with a portly cardinal and a white diplomat, leaving us, the hungry black and white sheep, still wrestling with ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... lordship would refresh his portly person in the bath, an officer of high rank shelters his noble head with a great umbrella of crimson and gold, while others wave golden fans before him. On these occasions he is invariably preceded by musicians, who announce his approach with ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... before suffer the monks and civil guards, because of their want of manners," a portly lady was saying, "but now that I see of what service they are, I could almost marry one ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... and his kneeling son? I believe THAT would be the thing!—But the plate must be surfaced so that A.J.M. mayn't exhaust all the good impressions. If Herkomer would etch that, and add a vignette of a scene I could give him with a beautiful peasant girl—or of the old sergeant and the portly and worldly "Madame," we SHOULD "do lovely!" Will ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... mayor's portrait, and he admitted that he was confoundedly short of money. The painter was anxious that Lavengro should sit to him for his Plutarch, which honour that gentleman firmly declined. Years afterwards he saw the portrait of the mayor, a 'mighty portly man, with a bull's head, black hair, a body like a dray horse, and legs and thighs corresponding; a man six foot high at the least. To his bull's head, black hair and body, the painter had done justice; there was one point, however, in which the portrait did not correspond ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... spoke English intermingled with Gipsy, stopping from time to time to explain to his assistant, or to teach him a word. This portly person appeared to be about as well up in the English Gipsy as myself—that is, he knew it quite as imperfectly. I learned that the master had been in America, and made New York and Brooklyn glad by his presence, while ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... the better," replied Camille. "I do love him—far too much for my own peace of mind. He may, perhaps, have had a passing fancy for you; for you are, you know, enchantingly fair, while I am as black as a crow; you are slim and willowy, while I have a portly dignity; in short, you are young!—that's the final word, and you have not spared it to me. You have abused your advantages as a woman against me. I have done my best to prevent what has now happened. However little of a woman you may think ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... for enjoyment. I went from Dover, and in the steamer there was the most infernally pretty girl. Black, mischievous eyes, with the devil's light in them; hair curly, crispy, frisky, luxuriant, all tossing over her head and shoulders, and an awfully enticing manner. A portly old bloke was with her—her father, I afterward learned. Somehow my hat blew off. She laughed. I laughed. Our eyes met. I made a merry remark. She laughed again; and there we were, introduced. She gave me a little felt hat of her own. I fastened it on in triumph ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... patron of philanthropic and industrial institutions, has been a national figure of the utmost dignity. Had you dropped into the Spring Garden Market in Philadelphia forty years ago, you would have found a portly gentleman, clad in a white apron, and armed with a cleaver, presiding over a shop decorated with the design—"Peter A. B. Widener, Butcher." He was constantly joking with his customers and visitors, and in the evening ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... shorter and broader, altogether a more portly little person, with a clever face, dreamy, questioning grey eyes, and a nose which was decidedly a snub—a fact there was no getting over, though Penelope often tried. Her hair, which was short and curly, was not so golden as Esther's; it ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... styled Stores Superintendent. I thought him the most impressive looking man I had ever seen. He overpowered me; in his presence I never felt at ease. He was a big man, and looked bigger than he was; good-looking too; ruddy, portly, well-dressed and formal. An embodiment of commercial energy and dignity. In his face gravity, keenness, and good health were blended. Soon after I joined his staff he left the Caledonian to become ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... arrived in the camp, where, having seen us coming, all the Boers were gathered. They are not a particularly humorous people, but this spectacle of the advance of Pereira seated on the pack-ox, a steed that is becoming to few riders, with the furious and portly Vrouw Prinsloo striding at his side and shrieking abuse at him, caused them to burst into laughter. Then Pereira's temper gave out, and he became even more abusive than ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... church with the sleepy-headed churchwarden, who was now wide awake and mightily concerned to know what horse Mr. Haward meant to enter for the great race at Mulberry Island, while at the foot of the steps he was seized upon by another portly vestryman, and borne off to be presented to three blooming young ladies, quick to second their papa's invitation home to dinner. Mr. Haward was ready to curse his luck that he was engaged elsewhere; ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... say, but he never went near his native country. For years and years he had lived abroad—not in any settled place of residence: they would travel about, and remain a year or two in one place, a year or two in another, as the whim suited them. A respectable, portly man, of quiet and gentlemanly manners, looking as little like one who need be afraid of the laws of his own land as can be. Neither is it said or insinuated that he was afraid of them. A gentleman who knew him had told, ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... stimulated them greatly. They could not lag behind that smile of hers which she gave them ere she kicked the drawing-room door. Mr. Beebe chirruped. Freddy was at his wittiest, referring to Cecil as the "Fiasco"—family honoured pun on fiance. Mrs. Honeychurch, amusing and portly, promised well as a mother-in-law. As for Lucy and Cecil, for whom the temple had been built, they also joined in the merry ritual, but waited, as earnest worshippers should, for the disclosure of some holier shrine ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... no young person—if person you were going to say. There was a big portly landlord, whom I dare say you have seen; a noisy, savage radical, who wanted at first to fasten upon me a quarrel about America, but who subsequently drew in his horns; then there was a strange fellow, a prowling priest, I believe, ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... through their boughs. There is always a pleasant diversion in a few hours' travel, and Beth found herself drawn from her thoughts by the antics of a negro family at the other end of the car. A portly colored woman presided over them; she had "leben chilen, four dead and gone to glory," as she explained ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... remarked a portly and well-dressed pillar of the church, "I was a good deal surprised. Rather too wild and flowery. Must ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... the portly wife of a merchant, "begging your pardon, this may be a fat instead of a lean sorrow. Leaves the poor ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of a portly man who was stroking his beard the wrong way projected itself upon them from the narrow, green entrance to the grotto. Neither of ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... the king a suitable republican reverence as he passed, which he answered with a gracious smile, and a benignant glance of his royal eye. The Hon. Louis Philippe Orleans, the present sovereign of the French, is a gentleman of portly and commanding appearance, and in his state attire, which he wore on this occasion, looks 'every inch a king.' He rides with grace and dignity, and sets an example of decorum and gravity to his subjects, by the solemnity of his ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... circumstances—which often produce remarkable men from Nature's ordinary handiwork—have produced one such here. Next, leaving him to sidle along the footwalk, cast your eyes in the opposite direction, where a portly female considerably in the wane of life, with a prayer-book in her hand, is proceeding to yonder church. She has the placid mien of settled widowhood. Her regrets have either died away or have become ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... widows in the country-side!" said the Abbot. "Ho! ho! ho!" and he shook his portly sides ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... door, sitting upon the railing, he perceives the portly figure of Mr. O'Brallaghan, who is singing a song of his own composition; not the ditty which has come down to modern times connected with this gentleman's name—but another and more original madrigal. The popular ditty, we have every reason to believe, was afterwards ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... time and space were not to be had, and chaos reigned along with the rats. Our chimney-piece was decorated with a flat-iron, a Bible, a candle minus stick, a lavender bottle, a new tin pan, so brilliant that it served nicely for a pier-glass, and such of the portly black bugs as preferred a warmer climate than the rubbish hole afforded. Two arks, commonly called trunks, lurked behind the door, containing the worldly goods of the twain who laughed and cried, slept and scrambled, in this refuge; while from the ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... having lived at Paris, and seized every occasion ostentatiously to show he was not ignorant of its pleasures and refinements; concealing beneath this film of varnish his inborn rusticity, he assumed as well as he was able the polish of one accustomed to good society. His tall, portly form was always tightly buttoned in a close-fitting uniform, and he lied outrageously about his age, never being able to bring himself to own up to his forty-five years. Had he had more intelligence he might have made himself an object of greater dread, but as it was his over-weening ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... enormous wealth, who had recently been raised to the peerage, was staying at one of our country houses. His daughter, my uncle, and an Italian Abbe were the only guests besides. The merchant was a portly, purple-faced man, who bore his new honours with a curious mixture of assumed pomposity and natural good-humour. The Abbe was dwarfish and deformed, lean, sallow, sharp-featured, with bright bird-like eyes, and a low, liquid voice. He was a political ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... them now: Bayard grown stout, portly, and covered with trinkets, while Leon, who has just entered the first class in pharmacy, has actually become a ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... tables set in the open air, and groaning beneath viands, nutritious and succulent. What swain or yokel had not a meed of praise for the monarch when he beheld this burden of good cheer, and, at the end of each board, elevated a little and garlanded with roses, a rotund and portly cask of wine, with a spigot projecting ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... Portly though she was, she was standing beside Margaret in an instant, clasping her in a motherly embrace and panting for breath. It was evidently too late for Logotheti to draw his glasses and shield over his face, or for Lushington to escape. Each stood stock-still, wondering how long it would ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... slightly portly gentleman of fifty-eight, though he did not look his age, thanks to the correct life he led. He had a military carriage, a rubicund face, a heavy mustache, keen, twinkling eyes, and a head of iron-gray hair. He was a childless widower, and Victor Nevill, the son of his dead ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... and the deep notes of the bassoon ringing clear from amidst the clash of merry voices. Music and careless mirth, the never failing concomitants of an Italian holiday, were here in full ascendency; for the birthday of the portly host happening to fall on the anniversary of St. Geronimo, the yearly festival which served to celebrate the two in one, was a matter of no small interest to the villagers. The dining room was filled almost to suffocation, and it were a matter admitting ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... Melba, and Tetrazzini I once camped in the heart of the Sierras. When I persisted to the uttermost secret corner of the Dolomites, I found myself anticipated by Kreisler and his fiddle. They tell me that the portly Victor Herbert has even penetrated with his daring orchestra through darkest Africa and gone on to arrange a special benefit, in his home town, for the dalai-lama ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... Persis interrupted. "It's just that I've heard of 'em before." As she left the elevator on the second floor, two women glided past her, one the portly widow with abundant crepe who is not easily differentiated, the other a stately girl with blonde hair and a scornfully tilted chin. Instinct told Persis ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... Joe," who lived at Bass Cove, where he shot wild ducks, took some to town for sale, and attracted the attention of a portly gentleman fond of shooting. This gentleman went duck shooting with Joe, and their adventures were more amusing to the boy than to ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... round, and beheld a man with a ruddy, pleasant face, and a stout figure. It was the rich miller from Bex. His broad, portly person, hid the slender, lovely Babette; but she came forward and glanced at him with her bright, dark eyes. The rich miller was very much flattered at the thought that the young man, who was acknowledged ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... the car made me lose my train and I was obliged to take a late train which did not stop at my home. I was still paying for my horse out of my own bone and sinew. At last the luscious green hills, the thick grasses, the tall corn-shocks and the portly hay-stacks of my native valley came in view and they never looked so abundant, so generous, so entirely sufficing to man and beast as now in returning from a land of cold green forests, ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... who put on about six suits, one after another, growing gradually larger, though no taller or fatter—just thick. All these in the hall were meaty, not one with that lean look of the pictures of "Uncle Sam," but more like our "John Bull," only not portly and complacent as he is, but just thick all over, at about the three coat stage; thick noses, thick hair, thick arms, thick legs, and nearly invariably clean-shaven and keen looking. The Senator said they were the ordinary business ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... Astley's Amphitheatre, and remained amongst other lumber in the property-room, until the late destructive fire which occurred there. On that night, the wife of one of the stage-assistants—a woman of portly dimensions—was aroused from her bed by the alarm of fire, and in her confusion, being unable to find her proper habiliments, laid hold of one of these scrolls, and wrapping it around her, hastily rushed into ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... a tall portly man entered the room with the assurance of one much at home here and, with an exclamation, Irving ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... this noontime luncheon, after talking with the portly, conservative, aggressive Arneel and the shrewd director of the stock-exchange, Cowperwood met a varied company of men ranging in age from thirty-five to sixty-five gathered about the board in a private dining-room ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... trouble commenced when I succeeded in getting the shoes of passengers which had been given to me to polish, badly mixed up. The shoes of a portly red faced man whose berth was in the forward end of the car, I placed by the berth of a tall and slim western yankee at the other end of the car, while a number 7 and a number 9 shoe were placed decorously by ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... is followed closely by a tall, well-groomed, rather portly and florid stranger, with a military moustache, who greets you with the utmost cordiality. "I happened to find myself in this neighbourhood," he says, "and I could not—I really could not—resist this opportunity. My name, I venture to think, is a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... weapon that she had more than once found effectual with her uncle. She flung herself into his arms and clasped him round the neck. He was a short, portly man, and from this position she began to cajole him—while Count Roumovski looked on with amused calm, and his sister, following his lead, ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... stickler for uniform—stopped opposite a very portly sailor whose medal-ribbon was an inch or so too low down. Fixing the man with his eye, the admiral asked: "Did you get that medal for eating, my man?" On the man replying "No, sir," the admiral rapped out: "Then why the deuce do you wear ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... and with needle-like pen, in characters fine as hair, upon a scroll garlanded with forget-me-nots, and borne in mid air by two portly doves, was Charlotte Arnold's name inscribed by the hero of ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a portly woman, with a round face, large forehead, and a little nose which seemed to be always laughing. She was a merry soul; and she used to tell "the children," as Charles and Lucy were called, "Liliputian stories," tales of the Fairy ...
— Little Sky-High - The Surprising Doings of Washee-Washee-Wang • Hezekiah Butterworth
... mother say they sold slaves on what they called an auction block. Jest like if a slave had any portly fine looking children they'd sell them chillun jest like selling cattle. I didn't see this, ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... singing-boys cast the ball into the air, as [58] high as he might, along the vaulted roof of the central aisle to be caught by any boy who could, and tossed again with hand or foot till it passed on to the portly chanters, the chaplains, the canons themselves, who finally played out the game with all the decorum of an ecclesiastical ceremony. It was just then, just as the canons took the ball to themselves so gravely, that Denys—Denys l'Auxerrois, as he was ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... a most exciting moment. For there, facing her portly old father, whose clouded face bespoke his troubled mind, stood her trimly-built young cousin Carausius the admiral, bronzed with his long exposure to the sea-blasts, a handsome young viking, and, in the eyes of the hero-loving Helen, very much of a hero because ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... beginnings the monastic system of Europe arose—that system which presents us with learning in the place of ferocious ignorance, with overflowing charity to mankind in the place of malignant hatred of society. The portly abbot on his easy going palfrey, his hawk upon his fist, scarce looks like the lineal descendant of the hermit starved into insanity. How wide the interval between the monk of the third and the monk of the thirteenth ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... his way across the street to the store where he usually sold his copra. Bullets were pattering on the roof, and the trader himself, a portly German in gold spectacles, ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... from replying by the hasty entrance of a bustling portly personage of loud voice and imperious manner, in whom Plotinus recognised Theocles, ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... hills where I could get a view inland to Kini Balu, over miles of jungle where no white man has ever been. But I wanted to see a little of this country, from the car-window at least. So I entered the station and interviewed the station master, a portly official of great dignity. He told me, in fair English, that the train on the "main line" had left for that day but that I could take a "local" out into the country for about three miles. This was better than nothing, so I climbed (and climb is the proper word) aboard ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... something remarkable that made Norman portly. But as for the shovel hat, Mrs. Meta has insisted on having it sent out. I was going to tell you that she says, "I do like such a good tough bit of stitchery, to fit my knight ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was nearly ten years since the great days of Father David's black mare; she had passed into legend, and Father David, something heavier than he was but no less keen, now followed hounds in more leisurely fashion on the back of the black mare's son, a portly and careful bay cob. ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... complicated technicalities of Roman law chose to mete out. Through a crowd of anxious loungers the youth passed to the apse of the upper end, in which the Prefect's throne stood empty, and then turned into aside chamber, where he found himself alone with the secretary, a portly Chaldee eunuch, with a sleek pale face, small pig's eyes, and an enormous turban. The man of pen and paper took the letter, opened it with solemn deliberation, and then, springing to his feet, darted out of the room in most ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... crony of his, one Bob Still, would come in; and then they would occupy the sentry-box together, and swill their beer in concert. This pot-friend of Danby was portly as a dray-horse, and had a round, sleek, oily head, twinkling eyes, and moist red cheeks. He was a lusty troller of ale-songs; and, with his mug in his hand, would lean his waddling bulk partly out ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... tumult of townsfolk, military chieftains, men-at-arms; the pictures of sombre interiors, and southern gardens, the hillside castle amid its vines, the court of love with its contending minstrels, the midnight camp lit by its fires; and, added to these, the Titianesque portraits of portly magnifico and gold-haired maiden, and thought-worn statist make up an environment which has no inconsiderable poetic value of its own, feeding, as it does, the inner eye with various forms and dyes, and leaving the "spirit in sense" more wealthy. With ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... deposit for the interior from the earliest times. In the rainy season the whole site is flooded, and only the upper stories are habitable. Cock-fighting seems to be the chief amusement. We breakfasted with the governor, a portly gentleman who kept a little dry-goods store. His excellency, without waiting for a formal introduction, and with a cordiality and courtesy almost confined to the Latin nations, received us into his ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... establishment; it was as clean and sweet as a kitchen. The little lamb, three days old, was brought out for my amusement, and doubtless pleased its mamma very much by showing off, and saying "baa," like a dutiful child! What a funny party we were, the portly commodore with your small aunty leaning on his arm, he sliding through narrow doors sideways, pulling me after him; then tall grandpa, and our little thin surgeon following in his train! I asked the head steward to tell me how much he cooked every day ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... Lagoon is the story of two cousins, Dicky and Emmeline Lestrange, stranded on a remote island with a beautiful lagoon. As children, they are cared for by Paddy Button, a portly sailor who drinks himself to death after only two and a half years in paradise. Frightened and confused by the man's gruesome corpse, the children flee to another part of Palm Tree Island. Over a period of five years, they grow up and eventually ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... flying from the judges' stand; a brass band in the upper story of that structure thrilled the air with the vibrations of popular waltzes and marches, somewhat marred now and then by mysteriously discordant bass tones; the judges, portly, red-faced, middle-aged gentlemen, sat below in cane-bottom chairs critically a-tilt on the hind legs. The rough wooden amphitheatre, a bold satire on the stately Roman edifice, was filled with the denizens of Colbury and the rosy ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... native visitors flocked to see them, and Doctor Johnson, a resident English physician, was constant in his attendance, knowing that the Consul must pay his bill. Three French priests also called upon them, one of whom proved to be no Frenchman, but a portly, handsome, good-humoured Irishman, well known and much disliked by the Polynesian protestant missionaries. A strong attempt was made by Guy and Wilson to get the men to do duty. A schooner was about to sail for Sydney, and they were threatened to be sent thither ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... too, were his eyes, though these she could not see, and the lashes over them, while his hands were long and fine. He looked most lonely and pathetic, there in the big oak chair that had so often accommodated the portly forms of departed abbots, and her warm heart went out towards him. Of course Isobel knew him, but not very well, for he was a shy lad and her father had never encouraged intimacy between the Abbey House and ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... hangings of the apartment moving in front of her, and perceiving a bulky protuberance, she immediately divined that the mayoress was hiding behind there, and that the protuberance was caused by her portly form. Now she discovered the mayor's design, and that it was probably a caprice of his spouse, and she made a vow not to suffer herself to be shorn unless she acquired by these means the five hundred maravedis needful to pay the Arabian physician who would give her father back ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... Ivan Ivan'itch, he belongs to the old school; but the two men must be contrasted rather than compared. The difference in their lives and characters is reflected in their outward appearance. Ivan Ivan'itch, as we know, is portly in form and heavy in all his movements, and loves to loll in his arm-chair or to loaf about the house in a capacious dressing-gown. The General, on the contrary, is thin, wiry, and muscular, wears habitually a close-buttoned military tunic, and always has a stern expression, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... rather good-natured portly woman with a taste for exaggerated garments which suggested the operatic stage. She met Patricia on the threshold, and patted her shoulder kindly as she led her ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... has come one of the proprietors, or superintendents, of a caravan of animals,—a large, portly paunched, dark-complexioned, brandy-burnt, heavy-faced man of about fifty; with a diminutive nose in proportion to the size of his face,—thick lips; nevertheless he has the air of a man who has seen much, and derived such experience as was for his purpose. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... rattling, creaking noise, as if a beam of timber, with pulley and chain, was being raised from behind the entrance. When the sound ceased the door yielded to the padre's sturdy shoulder, and there was just room to admit his portly body. Here the passage was wider, the rock evidently chiseled away by the hands of man, and on one side was an artificial chamber, blasted out of the solid rock, with a narrow door with heavy iron bolts on the outside. At this opening ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... with flowers, and a Japanese bonze was riding along on a griffin; a slim Venetian rapier had come to blows with a stout Ferrara sabre, all about a little pale-faced chit of a damsel in white Nymphenburg china; and a portly Franconian pitcher in gres gris was calling aloud, "Oh, these Italians! always at feud!" But nobody listened to him at all. A great number of little Dresden cups and saucers were all skipping and ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... voice came forward; a portly, respectable landlady. She surveyed Dolly, glanced at the cab, became very civil, invited Dolly in, and sent the maid upstairs to make inquiries, declaring she did not know herself whether the gentleman were out or in. Dolly would not sit down. The girl brought down word that ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... deference and authority the phrase is capable of. Mr. Biggar, having in his early Parliamentary days defied the Chair and affronted the sensibilities of the House, alike in the matter of dress and deportment, developed into a portly gentleman of almost smug appearance, a terror to new members. Woe to any who in his ignorance passed between the Chair and the member addressing it; who walked in from a division with his hat on; or who stood an inch ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... irrevocable to go so cheap, even to a hero. For only mark him when he is petitioned by heroes and heroines to undo what he does so easily! That small archway of Doctors' Commons seems the eye of a needle, through which the lean purse has a way, somehow, of slipping more readily than the portly; but once through, all are camels alike, the lean purse an especially big camel. Dispensing tremendous marriage as it does, the Law can ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to remain with her until one or the other of her brothers or sisters might be ready to take her in charge, either by moving into her abode or by her going to them. Hoshkanyi, therefore, had temporarily gone to live with his mother, but his portly consort was careful not to let him go alone. They had no children, and she felt constrained to keep an ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... a sample of the native race, but very sparingly represented in the city at any time. A dignified and portly gentleman is rolling along, with an air as though the place belonged to him. He is a Maori, as we plainly see; moreover, he is a chief, and is at present a member of the House of Representatives. There ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... the harsh, dogged, uncouth evangel, preaching his strange mission of honor; to Wayne, patient, silent, laborious, dependable; to young Denton, a "gentleman unafraid," facing the threats of E.M. Pierce; even to portly Shearson, struggling against such dismal odds for his poor little principle of journalism—to make the paper pay. How could he, their leader, recant his doctrine ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... was an elderly, pimply-faced, vegetable diet sort of man, in a black coat, and dark-mixtured trousers; and Mr. Dodson was a plump, portly, stern-looking man, with a loud voice. And it was from these worthies that Mr. Pickwick had received a letter dated the 28th of ...
— The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick - A Lecture • Frank Lockwood
... his face, lo, and behold! the moon shining in the Nor-west—yea, the sun blazing in his glory—had not a more crimson aspect than Reuben. Like the pig-eyed Chinese folk on tea-cups, his peepers were diminutive and twinkling; but his nose made up for them—and that it did—being portly in all its dimensions broad and long, as to colour, liker a radish than any other production in nature. In short, he was as bonny a figure as ever man of woman born clapped eye on; and was cleaving away most devoutly, at a side of black-faced mutton, when the woman, as I said before, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... was a young man who had never seen Marion. The great generals whom he was accustomed to see, were great of limb, portly, and huge of proportion. Such was Cornwallis, and others of the British army. Such, too, was the case among the Americans. The average weight of these opposing generals, during that war, is stated at more than two hundred pounds. The successes of Marion must naturally ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... We were in a great stone-flagged room, low-roofed, with dark cupboard door; not cheerful, I fancy, in the mere light of day: but nothing could resist the influence of those pine-knot flames. Maria herself was a portly fat woman, as far as possible from handsome; but she looked at me with a whole world of kindness in her dark face. Indeed, I saw the same kindness more or less shining out upon me in all the faces there. I cannot tell the mixed joy and ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... there was no time to say more, for at this moment the portly figure and the great face of Dr. Boomer, president of Plutoria University, loomed upon them. And with him came a great burst of conversation that blew all previous topics into fragments. He was introduced ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
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