"Rotund" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... couples were already seating themselves at tables round the walls, and Mrs. Townsend, resplendent as a super bareback rider with rather too rotund calves, was standing in the centre with the ringmaster who was in charge of arrangements. At a signal to the band everyone rose and began ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... be sure that Allan, rotund and smiling, was always ready for a crack with the ladies, and to recommend the brand new Pamela, the support of virtue, or some contemporary work of lesser genius. Though the general costume was like that ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... darling!" cried Genevieve, giving the rotund, gayly-clad figure a bear-like hug. "You look just as good as you used to—and my, my! just see all this new finery to welcome me," she added, holding off her beaming-faced old nurse at arms' length. "I reckon you'll think something has come, Mammy Lindy, when we all get settled," ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... the business man, and was rough and plain and blunt—a man of no genius and with loads of common sense. He made a specialty of unpalatable truths and discarded sentiment. Indeed, he was so good a business man that he got possession of a rotund interest in a group of coal mines without the outlay of a dollar, and later became the owner of sundry sheaves of railway stocks ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... their parents. There are two Sunday services at the chapel—one in the morning, and the other in the evening. No religious meetings are held in it during weekdays; the minister couldn't stand them; he is getting old and rotund; and, constitutionally, finds it quite hard enough to preach on Sundays. "He would be killed," said one of the deacons to us the other day, in a very earnest and sympathetic manner, "if he had to preach on week days—he's ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... contrast otherwise, however, the two presented. The man next the aisle was well past sixty, rotund of abdomen, rubicund of countenance, beetle-browed. He was elaborately well-groomed, almost foppish in attire, and wore the obvious stamp of worldly success, the air of one accustomed to giving orders and seeing them ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... no fault with the sentimentalists," answered the severe critic, "but that of exceeding feebleness. They have no bone and muscle in their genius—all is flaccid and rotund in its feminine symmetry. They seem to think that vigour consists in florid phrases and little aphorisms, and delineate all the mighty tempests of the human heart with the polished prettiness of a miniature-painter on ivory. No!—these ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... noon meal there. Jane went home twice for little visits and found changes even there,—the Teddy-bear, now trudging sturdily about in rompers, had a small sister, and Nannie Slade Hunter was prettier than ever, if a trifle too rotund, and Edward R., very prosperous and pleased with himself, had bought his wife an electric coupe, in which to take his offspring for a safe and opulent airing. Martin Wetherby, Assistant Cashier, ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... chair, and seated himself next the wall. He had no sooner ordered his luncheon than the door was again opened, and the rotund Mr. Papps, with profuse apologies, introduced a fourth to their table. The vacant place, it appeared, was the very last remaining in ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... a sad farewell, but many friends accompanied us to the station, and the rotund major and his rounder wife did us the like honour. Our major was a queer mixture: he was jolly because he was fat, and he was stern because he had a beaky nose, and in any interview one had first to ascertain whether the stomach or the nose ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... representative in the person of Mr. Byam Byll, once a master of fox-hounds, now a pauperized gourmand, who, in consideration of his coarse wit and "gentlemen's stories," was permitted to have the run of his teeth at Crompton. This Falstaff to the Squire's Prince Hal was a rotund and portly man, like his great prototype, but singularly handsome. His smile was winning yet, and, in spite of his load of years and fat, he still considered himself ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... I'll have to admit it," sighed his rotund friend. "But I don't care. It seems like Heaven to be in a place where they serve doughnuts like that. There's none of this 'do-have-a-doughnut' business. Some big husky passes you a platter with about a hundred on it and says, ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... portraits of actors and other theatrical celebrities range from Elizabeth, from the melodramatic costumes and faces of the contemporaries of Shakespeare, to the conventional costumes, the rotund expression, of the age of the Georges, masking a power of imaginative impersonation probably unknown in Shakespeare's day. Edward Burbage, like Shakespeare's own portrait, is, we venture to think, a trifle stolid. Field—Nathaniel ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... remarkably new and bright, both as to uniform and countenance. Indeed, if she had not worked herself into such a desperate state of mind she would have felt proud of him then and there. His shapely upright figure was quite noteworthy in the row of rotund yeomen on his right and left; while his charger Tony expressed by his bearing, even more than Jim, that he knew nothing about lime-carts whatever, and everything about trumpets and glory. How Jim could have scrubbed Tony to such shining blackness she could not tell, for the horse in his natural ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... places, which it soon makes insanitary. In the open it crouches among dead leaves which have gathered in the fork of a tree, and will construct a web which spans the coconut avenue with its stays. From one aspect its rotund body invites a good-humoured smile, for the marking exactly simulates the features of a tabby cat, well fed, sleepy, and in placid mood. Venom of virulence to kill a bat almost instantly would be severe enough to a human ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... comfortable resting-place. Elder Staples, in his faded black coat and white neck-cloth, leaned his quiet, contemplative head on his silver-mounted cane: right opposite him sat the Doctor, with his sturdy, rotund figure, and broad, seamed face, surmounted by a coarse stubble of iron-gray hair, the sharp and almost severe expression of his keen gray eyes, flashing under their dark penthouse, happily relieved by the softer lines of his mouth, indicative of his really genial and generous nature. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... off the running-board of the trolley car and rolled down a six-foot embankment. Fortunately the accident occurred on a curve and the car was running slowly. Still more fortunately, perhaps, Peters was a rotund youth well padded with flesh and he sustained no injuries beyond a sprained thumb. By the time the car had been stopped and hurried back to the rescue Peters was climbing a trifle indignantly up the bank. For the rest of the way he amused himself and others within hearing ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... prattle of sweet ideals and dear moralities. You are fat with power and possession, drunken with success; and you have no more hope against us than have the drones, clustered about the honey-vats, when the worker-bees spring upon them to end their rotund existence. You have failed in your management of society, and your management is to be taken away from you. A million and a half of the men of the working class say that they are going to get the rest of the working class to join with them and take the management away from you. This ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... Louvre. I wandered about looking at the pictures I knew so well, and let my fancy play idly with the emotions they suggested. I sauntered into the long gallery, and there suddenly saw Stroeve. I smiled, for his appearance, so rotund and yet so startled, could never fail to excite a smile, and then as I came nearer I noticed that he seemed singularly disconsolate. He looked woebegone and yet ridiculous, like a man who has fallen into the water with all his clothes on, and, being rescued from ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... the taller and more rotund of the two shopkeepers—especially about the middle—now strolled in, leaned over the counter, and picking up the lace, held it to the overhead light. Looked at from behind, Blobbs was all shirt-sleeves and waist-coat, the back ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... cavaliers. The "decorative impulse" is here at its topmost. In his second period we get the Decameron series, the episodes from Faust, the Don Quixote—recall, if you can, that glorious tableau with its Spanish group and the long, grave don and merry, rotund squire entering on the scene, a ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... fixed intention of taking part in the worship as fully as might be permitted. On their arrival Jim was utterly surprised to find that the uniformed Captain in command was the fat little fury of the street episode; and still more astonished when that rotund person peremptorily ordered him out of the building. As the rest of the Salvationists dutifully supported their Captain, Jim had no choice, and with a feeling of sadness that was not shared by Belle, he turned out ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... my way. My heart ceased to beat, my blood turned to ice; I was sick, absolutely sick, with terror. Besides this, the figure held me spellbound—I could neither move nor utter a sound. It had a white, absolutely white face, a tall, thin, perpendicular frame, and a small, glittering, rotund head. For some seconds it remained stationary, and then, with a gliding motion, left the path and vanished in ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... always out. What with the coming and the going, it was never still. The rafters of the great living-room shook with the roar of wassail and of song. At table sat men from all the world and chiefs from distant tribes—Englishmen and Colonials, lean Yankee traders and rotund officials of the great companies, cowboys from the Western ranges, sailors from the sea, hunters and dog-mushers ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... bull-proof, and no weeds grew in the shelters of the fences. Many of the level fields were in alfalfa. Others, following the rotations, bore crops planted the previous fall, or were in preparation for the spring-planting. Still others, close to the brood barns and pens, were being grazed by rotund Shropshire and French-Merino ewes, or were being hogged off by white Gargantuan brood-sows that brought a flash of pleasure in his eyes as he ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... and his overcoat was new and encumbering. Impossible to take a flying leap into the train! He missed the train. And then he reflectively stroked his short grey beard (he had no moustache, and his upper lip was very long), and then he smoothed down his new overcoat over his rotund form. ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... Sponge. 'Cards,' repeated he thoughtfully, stroking his hairy chin. 'Cards,' added he, for the third time, as he conned Facey's rotund visage, and wondered if he was a sharper. If the cards were fair, Sponge didn't care trying his luck. It all depended upon that. 'Well,' said he, in a tone of indifference, as he picked up his Mogg, thinking ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... never ceased to have a charm for both poets. Mrs. Browning loved him almost as a brother: her husband told Bayard Taylor, on the day when that good poet and charming man called upon them, and after another visitor had departed—a man with a large rosy face and rotund body, as Taylor describes him—"there goes one of the most splendid men living—a man so noble in his friendship, so lavish in his hospitality, so large-hearted and benevolent, that he deserves to be known all over the world as ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... thinking, his hands crossed upon his rotund stomach and his bowed legs as near crossed as they could ever be without an operation. He was pretty well satisfied that the man upstairs, who that pretty little nurse had said would be down in ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... market was in full swing, there appeared at the front door a tall, middle-aged peasant, with a hooked nose and a cap on the back of his head; it was Robelin, the farmer of Geffosses. Shortly afterwards came Liebard, the farmer of Toucques, short, rotund and ruddy, wearing a grey jacket ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... expansion about the throat and stomach, and they fit into the different cavities of the body at the wings, shoulders, rump and thighs with wonderful exactness; so that, in stuffing the bird, if you make an even, rotund surface of the skin where these cavities existed, in lieu of re-forming them, all symmetry, order and proportion are ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... he met the head of the family coming out; and as, hitherto, that personage has escaped description, it will be well for the reader to make his acquaintance. The first suggestion conveyed by his rotund figure was, that however scantily he furnished his boarders, he never stinted himself in the matter of food. He had the sluggish, clumsy look of a heavy eater. His face was large, his almost colorless eyes were small, and, if one might judge by the general expression of his features, his favorite ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... by the son. "Mon Dieu!" she cries; "what a path!" and through my open window there floats the odour of poudre-de-riz disturbed by nervous excitement. Papa follows. He is fat. No one can deny it, and I do not think he would like any one to try. Honesty is writ large on his rotund countenance. Now he is hot and somewhat weary with the climb. He carries his hat under his arm and large pearls of moisture shine on the puckered forehead. His hair is thick and closely cropped, and strives upward with the even aspiration of a doormat. His cheeks are a little sallow ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... Here I looked at sketches, plans, and working drawings until my eyes swam. Four more months passed which I utilized to the full. I then went to Kiel and saw a remarkable framework of steel slowly take shape upon the stocks across the way at Gaarden. Rotund, snug, and harmless the thing lay there. Inside it were hidden all the countless, complicated, and powerful features of those sketches and working drawings. I cannot boast that the reality as executed in steel and brass was any easier to grasp than ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... a sonorous voice behind us, "do you happen to have seen Judge Henry?" It was the reverend gentleman in his meadow, come to the fence. As we turned round to him he spoke on, with much rotund authority in his eye. "From his answer to my letter, Judge Henry undoubtedly expects me here. I have arrived from Fetterman according to my plan which I announced to him, to find that he has been absent all day—absent ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... (continued) And certainly of all the Kings Spent the most on wedding rings. But to search through old Archives For tales of Henry and his wives And all their little tiffs to trace We cannot spare the time or space. Yet there are some who fain would sing The praises of this rotund King; But as a husband we're afraid His category's lowest grade. He wielded harsh the despot's power, And packed his wives off to the Tower; Consigned them to a fate most dreaded; Two, alas! ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... submarines; one heard fragments of conversations—"They never trouble the Bordeaux route"—"Absolutely safe, je t'assure"; and in the accents of Iowa the commanding advice, "Now, don't worry!" "Good-bye, Jim! Good-bye, Maggie!" cried a rotund, snappy American drummer, and was answered with cheery, honest wishes for "the success of his business." Two young Americans with the same identical oddity of gait walked to and fro, and a little black Frenchman, with a frightful star-shaped scar ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... great misfortune to be stout, especially for a man. Jim was rotund and looked shorter than he really was, and as all the lines of his face, or what should have been lines, were really dimples, his face was about as flexible and full of expression as a pillow in a tight cover. The angrier he got the funnier he looked, and when he was ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in business the Diligente and Hercule now went cruising, and it was not long before the two harpies swooped down upon their prey in the shape of two Dutch East Indiamen, armed with twenty-five guns each, and manned by rotund-bodied Dutchmen. There was rich treasure aboard, and, with eagerness and zeal, the Frenchmen slapped ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... "English syndicate," an elusive sort of commercial sea-serpent with its head in London and its tail around the globe. The "inquiry" which had so gladdened the colonel's heart the morning ofthe breakfast with aunt Nancy had proceeded from this rotund negotiator. ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... hands, that lady herself sat placidly erect, arrayed in her blue and white striped muslin. Mrs. Daggett conscientiously wore stripes at all seasons of the year: she had read somewhere that stripes impart to the most rotund of figures an appearance of slimness totally at variance with the facts. As for blue and white, her favorite combination of stripes, any fabric in those colors looked cool and clean; and there was a vague strain of poetry in Mrs. Daggett's nature ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... assumed jurisdiction, the exact locality where the crime was committed being in doubt." He seemed to be the spokesman. The other, shorter and rotund, kept an amiable silence. "We hope you will see the wisdom of waiving extradition," he went on. "It will ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... mosaic-work of subdued reds, browns, greys, and crystals, held together by a rectangular frame of deep green. To the level eye of humanity it stood as an indistinct mass behind a dense stockade of limes and chestnuts, set in the midst of miles of rotund down and concave field. The mass became gradually dissected by the vision into towers, gables, chimneys, and casements, the highest glazings shining bleared and bloodshot with the coppery fire they caught from the belt of sunlit cloud in ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... himself, who never missed an opportunity to praise the food and the comforts to be enjoyed at the county "poorhouse" when he paid his semi-annual visit to the venerable dependents; Mr. Charlie Webster, the rotund manager of the grain elevator, who spent every Saturday night and Sunday in the city and showed up for duty on Monday with pinkish eyes and a rather tremulous whistle that was supposed to be reminiscent of ecclesiastical associations; ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... climb trees!" And Chunky Brown went off into a paroxysm of silent mirth, his rotund body convulsed ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... felicitous in this grave record. It was a rotund kind of learning which was cherished by Dr. Stiles and similar guardians of the old traditions of scholarship, and in the absence of much commerce with their intellectual peers beyond the limits of the colonies, each college ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... brown ware, having its upper edge worn away like a threshold by the rub of whole generations of thirsty lips that had gone the way of all flesh, and bearing the following inscription burnt upon its rotund side in ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... fumbled with the latch before he opened the door and passed quietly out into the night. He alone noticed, but there was the faintest shadow of a queer smile upon his own lips as he turned back to the big notebook open on his knees—a vaguely unpleasant smile that was not in keeping with the rotund jollity ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... say, "I'm well out of it, though. The ocean doesn't have any mercy on a body's bones, but tosses you about as if you were an India-rubber ball made on purpose;" added he, bursting into a hearty roar as he caught Mrs. Bates' eye fastened upon his rotund proportions, as if to ascertain where the bones were. "Oh! well, my good woman," continued he, "even a porpoise couldn't stand the bumping and thumping that we poor mortals are subject to when we trust ourselves on ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... her to be led to look upon the Red One face to face. It was the old story, he recognized, that the woman must pay, and it occurred when the two of them, one day, were catching the unclassified and unnamed little black fish, an inch long, half-eel and half-scaled, rotund with salmon-golden roe, that frequented the fresh water, and that were esteemed, raw and whole, fresh or putrid, a perfect delicacy. Prone in the muck of the decaying jungle-floor, Balatta threw herself, clutching his ankles with her hands kissing his ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... typical Southern establishment: a white house, or rather three houses, all of one story, built on to each other as beehives are set in a row, all porches and galleries. No one at home but the cook, a rotund, broad-faced woman, with a merry eye, whose very appearance suggested good cooking and hospitality; the Missis and the children had gone up to the river fishing; the Colonel was somewhere about the place; always was ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the rotund boat swung into the Brooklyn dock. Her gunwales rubbed and squeaked along the straining piles green with sea slime; deck chains clinked, cog-wheels clattered, the stifling smell of dock water gave place to the fresher ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... to guard the site and protect the gang of woodchoppers set to work at once, then turned their faces homeward. They had spent four days and nights at the Gap, and the more the youngster saw of the rotund quartermaster the less he cared to cultivate him. A portly, heavily built man was he, some forty years of age, a widower, whose children were at their mother's old home in the far East, a business man with a keen eye for opportunities and investments, a ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... crawl away, she turned to him and thanked him warmly, looking very pretty now, with the color in her cheeks. But Mr. Smith answered no word. He stared over her head, grew red in the face, fidgeted nervously, but held his peace until his eyes fell on a rotund Teuton ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... touch displaced From the vast Rotund and the neighbouring dead When her husband followed; bowed; half-passed, With lip upcast; Then, ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... minutes, that it really would be a case for a chirurgeon, with cupping and leeching and smelling salts. Our rotund friend was in a bad way. His heart, plainly, was broken. From his right-hand trouser emerged a green roll. With delicate speed and tact the conductor hastened this tragic part of the performance. His ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... thus has been thy warfare for ever. First, thou stealest from the rotund face its joyous dimples; then, dost thou gradually imprint remorseless ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... that afternoon, a pleasant, somewhat rotund-looking man was seen engaged in conversation with Old Dut in a corner of the schoolyard. At the close of the afternoon session that same man stepped into the schoolroom, accepting the principal's offer of a chair on ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... fragments. Carefully Holmes held each separate shard to the light, but in no way did it differ from any other shattered piece of plaster. He had just completed his examination when the hall lights flew up, the door opened, and the owner of the house, a jovial, rotund figure in shirt ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Shoop waddled from the office with Bondsman at his heels. There was something humorous, almost pathetic, in the gaunt and grizzled Airedale's affection for his rotund master. And Shoop's broad back, with the shoulders stooped slightly and the set stride as he plodded here and there, often made the clerk smile. Yet there was nothing humorous about Shoop's face when he flashed to anger or studied some one who tried to mask a lie, or when he reprimanded ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... the acquaintance of another one of the crew,—Louis he is called, a rotund and jovial-faced Nova Scotia Irishman, and a very sociable fellow, prone to talk as long as he can find a listener. In the afternoon, while the cook was below asleep and I was peeling the everlasting potatoes, Louis dropped into the galley for ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... the bond grew firmer, ampler forth Pressed they the fluid essences that reared Sun, moon, and stars, and main, and heaven's high wall. For those of atoms lighter far consist, Subtiler, and more rotund than those of earth. Whence, from the pores terrene, with foremost haste Rushed the bright ether, towering high, and swift Streams of fire ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... contour of his body, not an angle was apparent. His garments were quite filled by his body, arms and legs—so that there was not a wrinkle to be seen anywhere. It was a form usually styled "dapper." His face was also of the rotund shape—the features all tolerably regular, with the exception of the nose—that, like the nasal organ of his comrade, was nez retrousse—the turn-up being infinitely more pronounced. The expression was equally indicative of good-nature and good-fellowship—as ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... remarkable act which he performed in the exercise of his judicial functions. A familiar set of nursery rhymes sets forth the utter inability of all the King's horses and men to reform the shattered Humpty-Dumpty, when his rotund highness had fallen from a wall; but when a wretched market-woman, whose entire basketful of new-laid eggs had been wilfully smashed by an enemy, sought in her trouble the aid of Chancery, the holy Chancellor Swithin miraculously restored each broken shell to perfect shape, each yolk to soundness. ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... people of all others with whom I would like to worship to-day," I thought; "and I hope that that rotund old lady, whose face beams under the shadow of her deep bonnet like a harvest moon through a fleecy cloud, will feel moved to speak." I plucked a few buds from the sweet-briar bush, fastened them in my button-hole, ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... to loathe the sight, so common alas! in England, of the affluent spinster, "growing pointlessly rotund on rich food at one of the smug hotels or boarding-houses for parasitic nonentities, which are distributed so plentifully all over the land," while thousands of promising young men had to wait too long ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... Pellams' heart lost little of its wonted buoyancy. This was about the last class of any kind he attended in the week between nomination and election. From the Row to the Hall and from the Hall to Palo Alto he moved with an energy rare to his rotund body. It was a new sensation, politics with a josh behind. ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... minister, which was as much a part of her as her breathing, contended in a vigorous fight against her much too solid flesh. It was a certain aid to wakefulness that her two children, deep in audible slumber, kept her in a state of active concern lest their inert and rotund little masses of slippery flesh should elude her grasp, and wreck the proprieties of the hour by flopping on the floor. There was also a further sleep deterrent in the fact that immediately before her sat Mr. McFettridge, whose usually erect form, yielding ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... would soon be done with his rotund person and jovial face, if he could no longer send the sharp arrows of his wit and sarcasm into the ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... "Warnted, a rotund, bucksom, good-lookin and good-natured madin, suiterbel for a wife. One wot knowes enuf to put on stile & run a fashernable stablishment. Apply urley at this offis, to the ...
— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray
... of a man between thirty-eight and forty years of age, big-bodied, rapidly acquiring that rotund shape which is thought becoming to bishops, about six feet high though stooping a little, prodigiously active, walking with incredible rapidity, having large limbs, large feet, large though well-shaped and very white hands; in short, a huge fellow physically, ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... dragoman wheeled and made demoniac signs. Coleman half-turned to survey the main body, and then paid his attention swiftly to the front. The white road sped to the top of a hill where it seemed to make a rotund swing into oblivion. The top of the curve was framed in foliage, and therein was a horseman. He had his carbine slanted on his thigh, and his bridle-reins taut. Upon sight of them he immediately wheeled and galloped down the other slope ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... such a nation, is determined by the Gopher Prairies. The greatest manufacturer is but a busier Sam Clark, and all the rotund senators and presidents are village lawyers and bankers grown nine ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... paying, commercial basis?" demanded Flint, while Waldron, now a trifle less scornful, seemed to listen with more interest as his eyes rested on the rotund form ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... smiled to see the rotund little object of two-feet-ten standing before the fire with its legs apart and its arms crossed, putting such a question, ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... President and Congress. The great quarrel had created excitement so intense as to affect men's balance of mind. About the time of the assembling of Congress Mr. Preston King of New York (the same rotund gentleman with whom, in the National Convention of 1860, I conducted Mr. Ashmun to the chair), who had been a Senator of the United States and had been appointed Collector of Customs by President Johnson, committed suicide by jumping into the North River ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... barely taken their seats in the box, and the orchestra had only just begun the overture, when the usher knocked and Blanch, followed by the rest of the family, entered. That young lady greeted Alice with an effusive kiss at once, and the next instant she found herself shaking hands with a rotund and gray-haired lady of dignified bearing, but of very kind and courteous manner. An introduction to Edith followed, and then Frank acknowledged her polite "How do you do, Mr. Nason?" with ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... Phoebe Metz had ever been taught to believe in that patron saint of the children—oh, no! Maria Metz would have considered it foolish, even sinful, to lie to a child about any mythical Santa Claus coming down the chimney Christmas Eve! Nevertheless, the smiling, rotund face of the red-habited Santa in the store window seemed so real and so emanative of cheer that Phoebe delighted in him each year and felt sure there must be a Santa Claus somewhere in the world, even though Aunt Maria ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... transportation, the senior officer grunted inarticulately, and waved me in the direction of his clerk, glaring at me meanwhile with an expression which combined singularly the dissimilar effects of a gimlet and a plane. The rotund junior contented himself with glancing suspiciously at the order and sternly at me. As if reassured, however, by my plausible countenance, he flipped over the pages of a ledger, told me the number of my stateroom, and hunted up a packet of letters, which he delivered with an acid reproof ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... of a crupper is to prevent the saddle working forward on the horse's back, which it will not do if the animal is of a proper shape and the girths sufficiently tight. In ancient days, when riding-horses were more rotund than they are now, and saddles were not so well made, cruppers were generally used, but within the last forty years they have gone entirely out of fashion. A crupper is not to be despised in out-of-the-way parts abroad, when we have to ride animals of all sorts ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... of his robberies and rapes. Something must be abated for boastfulness. But after all deduction there remains a tale of crime that is unsurpassed. His most admirably artistic quality is his complete consistence. He was a ruffian finished and rotund; he made no concession, he betrayed no weakness. Though he never preached a sermon against the human race, he practised a brutality which might have proceeded from a gospel of hate. He spared neither friends nor relatives, and he murdered his own mother with ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... would have appeared the successive governors, Winthrop, Dudley, Bellingham, and Endicott, who sat in the chair while it was a chair of state. Then its ample seat would have been pressed by the comfortable, rotund corporation of the honest mint-master. Then the half-frenzied shape of Mary Dyer, the persecuted Quaker woman, clad in sackcloth and ashes would have rested in it for a moment. Then the holy, apostolic form of Eliot would have sanctified it. Then would have arisen, ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a family of rich bourgeois enter, just in from the country, for the Montparnasse station is opposite. The fat, sunburned mama, and the equally rotund and genial farmer-papa, and the pretty daughter, and the newly married son and his demure wife, and the two younger children—and all talking and laughing over a good dinner with champagne, and many toasts to the young couple—and to mama and papa, and little ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... You can't take me in. It's Lasse, of course, and Pelle!" And she held out her hand. She was short, like her husband, was always smiling, and had bowed arms and legs just as he had. Hard work and their cheerful temperament gave them both a rotund appearance. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... looked Lark up and down with his usual rotund complacency, Carol only gritted her teeth and reminded her heaving soul that he ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... them had taken on some especial dramatic character from the occasion. Such personalities as Aunt Anne and Miss Avies were in any case vivid and dramatic, but to-night Aunt Elizabeth and the placidly rotund Mrs. Smith, who was sitting in the front row with her mouth open, and simple little Miss Pyncheon, Aunt Anne's ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... them off their Legs they should have them at Advantage; Besides, they had been inform'd, though falsely, that the British Ladies had not good Legs, and then at all Events this Scheme would expose them. With these pernicious Views they set themselves to work, and form'd a Rotund of near 7 Yards about, and sent the Pattern over by the Sussex Smugglers with an Intent that it should be seiz'd and expos'd to Publick View; which happen'd accordingly, and made its first Appearance at a Great Man's House on that Coast, whose Lady claim'd it as her peculiar Property. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... purpose. And in winter I shall do gymnastics (38) under cover, or when the weather is broiling under shade.... But what is it you keep on laughing at—the wish on my part to reduce to moderate size a paunch a trifle too rotund? Is that the source of merriment? (39) Perhaps you are not aware, my friends, that Charmides—yes! he there—caught me only the other morning in the act ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon
... "Now,"—the rotund voice sunk into the confidential, sympathetic register, yet with a tone of saddened rebuke,—"there are topics that the lips shrink from when ladies are present. But I have a word for you young men. Young blood! Ah, young blood, and the fire of life! For that we pay a penalty. Yet we must not overpay ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... abruptly struck him, flashing the symbol into his imagination—that Maria lived so close to the universe that her life and movements were akin to those of the heavenly bodies. He saw her as an epitome of the earth. Fat, peaceful, little, calm, rotund Maria—a miniature earth! She had no call to hurry nor rush after things. Like the earth she contained all things within herself. It made him smile; he smiled as he looked down into her face; she smiled as she rolled her blue ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... the first stranger handed his neighbour the large mug—a huge vessel of brown ware, having its upper edge worn away, like a threshold, by the rub of whole genealogies of thirsty lips that had gone the way of all flesh, and bearing the following inscription burned upon its rotund side in ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... this Art be in its grave Whose form was lately so rotund, Whose strength was as a bull's and gave No sign of being moribund? I'm sure my facts are right, or how Do you account for Chu ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... hesitated, for a moment, whether he should go out himself and notice what was taking place, or not. The question, however, was decided for him by the door of the room being thrown suddenly open, and the rotund person of the clergyman of the parish, bearing, in the "fair round belly with fat capon lined," the sign and symbol affixed by Shakspeare to the "Justice of Peace," entered the apartment. He gazed with some surprise upon two persons, who, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... surprised at the remarkable man that he really was. Now it was exactly the opposite sense that came over him. In the gold-rimmed mirror that was over his mantlepiece he saw himself diminishing, diminishing, diminishing.... First himself, large, red-faced, smiling, rotund, lying back in his chair; then the face shrivelling, the limbs shortening, then the face small and peaked, the hands and legs little and mean, then the chair enormous about and around the little trembling animal cowering against ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... root. Retic'ulated. Marked with cross lines like a net. Rev'olute. Rolled upward or backward. Ri'mose. Cracked. Rim'ulose. Covered with small cracks. Ring. Annulus. Riv'ulose. Marked with lines like rivers in maps. Rotund'. Round. Ru'gose. Wrinkled. ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... he saw us, pulled up his steed with much difficulty, and joined us. The horse was small but beautiful, a sorrel with long mane and tail; had he been hoodwinked he might perhaps have been mistaken for a Cordovese jaca; he was broad-chested, and rotund in his hind quarters, and possessed much of the plumpness and sleekness which distinguish that breed, but looking in his eyes you would have been undeceived in a moment; a wild savage fire darted from the restless orbs, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... ox, and ass, the three abreast, drag piles of country produce, jingling their fantastic harness, and primitive carts laden with red-soaked wine-casks rattle recklessly along; where bare-footed, girdled, and tonsured monks plod on their no-business, and every third man one passes is a rotund ecclesiastic, who never in his life walked at more than a mile an hour; where, at evening, carriages returning from the Villa Nazionale cram the thoroughfare from side to side, and make one aware, if one did not previously know it, that parts of the ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... gentleman who led the orchestra that played during the evening at the hotel was chosen in his stead. At the end of the third month a red flag was seen hanging at the door of Mr. Strout's store and Mr. Beers the auctioneer whose once rotund voice had now become thin and quavering, sold off the remaining stock and the fixtures. Then the curtains were pulled down and the door locked. The next day Mr. and Mrs. Strout and family ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... understand—is: Canada is not drifting because she is sheet-anchored and gripped to the Mother Country. We may like it or dislike it. We may dispute and argue round about. The fact remains, without any screaming or flag waving, or postprandial loyalty expansions of rotund oratory and a rotunder waist line—Canada is sheet-anchored to England by an invisible, intangible, almost indescribable tie. That is one reason why she rejected reciprocity. That is why at a colossal ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... was the one called Menegazzo, from the name of the rotund proprietor, Menico. This place was much frequented by men of letters; and heated discussions were common there between Angelo Maria Barbaro, Lorenzo da Ponte, and ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... crutches, tottering on the brink of the sewers—shores I mean—of eternity; behold his crushed and crownless hat—his hollow eyes—his rheumy visage—look at that petition penned on his breast. Poh! 'tis a surveyor's notice to pull down. But, then, look at that plurality parson with rotund prominence of portico, and red brick cheeks of vast extent, and that high, steeple-crowned hat—look at the smug, mean, insignificant dwarf of a meeting-house, sinking up to its knees in a narrow lane, and looking as blank as a wall, with a trap-door of a mouth, and a grating ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 385, Saturday, August 15, 1829. • Various
... those called gallant, was famous for her precocious embonpoint which had earned her the nickname of "Boule de Suif" (ball of tallow). Short and rotund all over, fat enough to supply lard, with puffed fingers constricted at the joints and looking like strings of small sausages, a shiny and tight skin, an enormous bust which protruded from under her gown, she was yet attractive and much coveted, ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... Cupids swam through the azure depths, to the edification of nondescript prodigies, who constituted the massive molding, or frame, to the decorative scene. The ancient fireplace, broad and deep, had given way to an ornate mantel of marble; the capacious tankard and rotund pewter pot of olden times, suggestive of mighty butts of honest beer, had been supplanted by goblets of silver and gold, covered with scroll work, ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... tribute, having momentarily withdrawn himself from mamma, whose loyal escort he was once more. Willie was a shade balder than last year, when he had played his great part in Cally's life and then sunk below her horizon; a shade more rotund; a shade rosier in the face. But he was as genial as ever, being well lined now with a menu to his own taste and an ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... carefully drew down his waistcoat over his rotund middle and settled his hat on his head at an exact angle. His son accompanied him to the elevator with an arm about his shoulder and as he returned to the outer office he directed curtly, "Carl, come into my room. I want to ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... account in four figures and a credit that was gilt edged. An even half-century of summers and winters had passed over his head, and, in the passing, fattened him comfortably and snugly. Short of stature, his full front was as rotund as a water-melon seed. His face was moon- faced. His garb was dignified and silken, and his black-silk skull-cap with the red button atop, now, alas! fallen on the ground, was the skull-cap worn by the successful and ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... derived from his instructors. On returning home, he fitted up an attic room, with a skylight, in his father's mill, for a studio, where he probably pursued his labors for several years, as he did not remove to Amsterdam till 1630. Here he studied the grotesque figure of the Dutch boor, or the rotund contour of the bar-maid of an ale house, with as much precision as the great artists of Italy have imitated the Apollo Belvidere, or the Medicean Venus. He was exceedingly ignorant, and it is said that he could scarcely read. He was of a wayward and eccentric disposition, and ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... giants. On the contrary, I found that these Moonites grow to only about one-fourth our height, but possess fully three-fourths as much circumference of body. Notwithstanding that they are so short and rotund, they are healthy and exceedingly quick ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... swords and advanced to the middle of the lawn, and stood opposite one another, with flowing linen shirts open at the throat, and bared heads. They were indeed a contrast. Mr. Riddle, tall and white, with closed lips, glared at his opponent. Mr. Darnley cut a merrier figure,—rotund and flushed, with fat calves and short arms, though his countenance was sober enough. All at once the two were circling their swords in the air, and then Nick had flung open the shutter and leaped through the window, and was running and shouting towards the astonished gentlemen, all of whom wheeled ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... pining of the 'love-bird' for its absent mate, and the keen distress of a hen on losing her chickens, furnish abundant evidence of vivid feelings of the kind in question. Even the stupid-looking ostrich has heart enough to die for love, as was the case with a male in the Rotund of the Jardin des Plantes, who, having lost his mate, pined ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... meeting in Breede's office. It showed, he thought, how life "worked around." The thing was coming to his very door. With considerable interest he studied the directors as they came and went. Most of them, like Breede, were men whose wealth the daily press had a habit of estimating in rotund millions. He regarded them knowingly, thinking he could tell them something that might surprise them. But they passed him, all unheeding, moneyed-looking men of good round girth, who seemed to have found ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... brains. I leave that to Mr. Banneker's editorials. I'm after the laugh that starts down here." He laid hand upon his rotund waistcoat. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... an inferior, or dynamic, order, have often been seen by astronomers. Of course it may be that the phenomena that we shall now consider are not angels at all. We are simply feeling around, trying to find out what we can accept. Some of our data indicate hosts of rotund and complacent tourists in inter-planetary space—but then data of long, lean, hungry ones. I think that there are, out in inter-planetary space, Super Tamerlanes at the head of hosts of celestial ravagers—which have come here and pounced upon civilizations of the ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... personality does bring comfort and relief. In the adjoining settlement of Bareneed lives an enormously fat old woman of seventy-odd summers. Life passes over her, and its only effect is to make her rotund and unwieldy. When the sick come to Brother Luke for treatment, if any of the few drugs which he has accumulated chance to have lost their labels—a not uncommon contingency in this land of mist and fog—he takes down a likely-looking bottle from the shelf, and tries a dose of ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... silver-mounted wand he brandished was in his eyes as honorable a distinction as the marshal's baton which Conde threw, or did not throw, into the enemy's line of battle at Fribourg. His person had undergone a change, analogous to the change in his dress; his figure had grown rotund and, as it were, canonical. The striking points of his face were effaced; he had still a nose, but his cheeks, fattened out, each took a portion of it unto themselves; his chin had joined his throat; his eyes were swelled up with the puffiness of his cheeks; his hair, cut straight ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... restlessness. She seemed never still for an instant; her legs had a fidgety, nervous movement in them, and in moments of excitement, which were not infrequent, she was given to executing a sort of war-dance. Old she was not; but her peculiar graces of person, her rotund form, her badly-made front of flaxen curls, which was rarely in its place, made her appear so. A bold, scheming, unscrupulous, vulgar-minded woman, who had never considered other people's feelings in her life, whether equals or inferiors. In her day she ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... another nickname for Pin, owed to her rotund little body and mere sticks of legs—she was "all belly" as Sarah put it—and the mere mention of it made Pin fly; for she was very touchy about ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... he was holding up a streamer of bunting, but waited comfortably for the hammer to be fetched to him. And scarcely had the fetcher started to climb before there came the voice of a woman from across the stage: "Comrade Higgins, has the Ypsel banner come?" And from the rear part of the hall came the rotund voice of fat Comrade Rapinsky: "Comrade Higgins, will you bring up an extra table for the literature?" And from the second tier box Comrade Mary Allen spoke: "While you're downstairs, Comrade Higgins, would you mind telephoning and making sure the Reception Committee knows about ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... the entire building was wrapped in flames. All egress from my chamber, except through a window, was cut off. The crowd, however, quickly procured and raised a long ladder. By means of this I was descending rapidly, and in apparent safety, when a huge hog, about whose rotund stomach, and indeed about whose whole air and physiognomy, there was something which reminded me of the Angel of the Odd—when this hog, I say, which hitherto had been quietly slumbering in the mud, took it suddenly into his ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... current. It was not much later that Franklin found himself one of the committee of five elected by ballot to frame a declaration of independence. Had he been called upon to write the document he would certainly have given something more terse and simple than that rotund and magniloquent instrument which Jefferson bequeathed to the unbounded admiration of American posterity. As it was, Franklin's recorded connection with the preparation of that famous paper is confined to the amusing tale about John Thompson, Hatter, wherewith ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... there came into the dining room a rotund, middle-aged Jewish gentleman, coated with dust and wearing ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... Meanwhile, the rotund landlord had entered unobserved; and a contrast he made, indeed, to the endearing words of the lovers as at this instant he unceremoniously burst forth in ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... to the judge, and saw that he was listening to a rotund, gray little man with beady, bird-like eyes who, as he talked, bowed and gesticulated. Behind him stood a younger man, a more modern edition of the other. He also bowed and, behind gold ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... the middle of the street and looked straight at me. The heavy face, greasily moist on the cheeks and nose, was serious. His rotund fist went up to the dark yellow mustache, so carefully pointed, and smoothed it tenderly. Then he continued to lay bare his heart to me "I want her; but, you know, I shall marry her all right, I shall. She's called Eudoxie Dumail. At first, I wasn't thinking ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... with it, and the other causes may develop themselves in narration. There were ten of us, and we started in a grand yellow brake with four horses and a surly coachman. The morning was excessively warm, and some of the party were of such rotund proportions, that the thin ones were nearly lost sight of, if they chanced to sit between them, while the warmth approached to that of a cucumber frame with the sun on it. We attracted a good deal of attention as we crawled down the Rue Serviez and passed the ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... Colonel Mallett's, courtesied with old-time quaintness, then her lifted eyes swept the rosy, rotund countenances before her. To each she courtesied and spoke, offering ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... the swirling tide, and as the train moved he looked at his fellow-passengers. There was a pleasant air of opulence all about him. Gold chains of fair prominence, diamonds of lustrous hue, decorated the always rotund figures. He fell to wondering why the men were all of a gross physique; why did the ladies wear dresses of such interminable variety of color; from whence came the money for this ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... Bark, with no particular intent, drew forth from the pouch in his skin cloak a string of sinew, and drawing the ends of the strong twig somewhat nearly together, attached the cord to each, thus producing accidentally a petty bow of most rotund proportions. He found that the string twanged joyously, and, to the delight of Beechleaf, kept twanging it for such time as his boyish temperament would allow a single occupation. Then he picked from the ground a long, ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... switched back to Tom, and in that instant Chow jumped the intruder. With surprising agility for his rotund bulk, the cook bore down on him and let fly a gnarled fist at the stranger's jaw. Tom followed up like lightning, grabbing the man's wrist and yanking his ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton
... feasted as the chapel pastor. His tall and yet rotund body and his broad red face might easily be mistaken for the outward man of a sturdy farmer, and he likes his pipe and glass. He dines every Sunday, and at least once a week besides, at the house of one of his stoutest upholders. It is said that at such a dinner, after a large ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... call and challenge of sentinel and outpost from the bank above. Thereafter presently appeared Giles (that chanced to be captain of the watch) very joyously haling along a little man placid and rotund. A plump little man whose sober habit, smacking of things ecclesiastic, was at odds with his face that beamed forth jovial and rubicund from the shade of his wide-eaved hat: a pilgrim-like hat, adorned with many small pewter images of divers ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... mind by the following inventory: "Fine house in the rue du Bac, salons handsomely furnished, good pictures, one hundred thousand francs a year, husband formerly receiver-general of the department of Montenotte." So saying, the Practical man, rotund and fat and usually dressed in black, will project his lower lip and wrap it over the upper, nodding his head as if to add: "Solid people, those; nothing to be said against them." Ask no further; Practical men settle everybody's status by figures, ...
— Madame Firmiani • Honore de Balzac
... open. She held a tumbler in one hand and a bottle in the other, from which a stream of brandy gurgled. That rotund impostor ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... much exceeded that of all the rest of the party put together. As for Jack Tier, his conduct singularly belied his appearance. No one would have expected any great show of manly resolution from the little rotund, lymphatic figure of Tier; but he had manifested a calmness that denoted either great natural courage, or a resolution derived from familiarity with danger. In this particular, even Mulford regarded his deportment with surprise, ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... peasantry drinking, or watering horses and donkeys—pantomime. Priests, in crow-black raiment, and canal-boat or shovel hats—mystery. Strangers from Rome, in the negro-minstrel style of costume, if young men; or in the rotund-paunch and black-raiment dress, if elderly men; or in the chiffonee style, if Roman women ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and emptied the cut tobacco into a clean tin box. It was clear that the day's work was almost at an end for all present. At that moment Fischelowitz entered with jaunty step and smiling face, jingling a quantity of loose silver in his hand. He is a little man, rotund and cheerful, quiet of speech and sunny in manner, with a brown beard and waving dark hair, arranged in the manner dear to barbers' apprentices. He has very soft brown eyes, a healthy complexion and a nose the inverse of aquiline, for it curves upwards to its sharp point, as though perpetually snuffing ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... least until after 'Change had closed. And so, having put themselves at her service with extravagant protestations of loyalty, promising candy, books, flowers, a choir to sing beneath her window, they finally trooped off, half carrying the rotund Mr. Kulm, who had sprinted himself into a jelly-like state ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... designated, is that of the fishers — Right-Whale Porpoise, from the circumstance that he is chiefly found in the vicinity of that Folio. In shape, he differs in some degree from the Huzza Porpoise, being of a less rotund and jolly girth; indeed, he is of quite a neat and gentleman-like figure. He has no fins on his back (most other porpoises have), he has a lovely tail, and sentimental Indian eyes of a hazel hue. But his mealy-mouth spoils all. Though his entire ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... obviously believe in watching their interests at close hand. The floor above, by reason of the rail-protected opening in the center, is little more than a spacious gallery; but it is there that the big gamblers congregate, natives in costly fabrics, and whose rotund bodies tell of lives not spent in toil. They loll on blackwood divans and smoke opium and send their bank-notes and commands to the gambling table by servants, until yielding to the exalted dreams induced by the poppy fumes. They are polite fellows, ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... and trying to assume an easy stride in spite of the uncomfortable addition to his already rotund figure, he slipped into the hotel, where avoiding the lighted elevator, he laboured ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... which Webster, Clay, and Calhoun were orators. He was not a rhetorician; he had neither grace of manner nor a fine presence, neither an imposing delivery, nor even pleasing tones. On the contrary, he was exceptionally lacking in all these (p. 228) qualities. He was short, rotund, and bald; about the time when he entered Congress, complaints become frequent in his Diary of weak and inflamed eyes, and soon these organs became so rheumy that the water would trickle down his cheeks; a shaking of the hand grew upon him to such an extent that in time he had to use artificial ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... had been pinioned and resolutely held by his escort, otherwise he would undoubtedly have fallen also upon Van Wandenberg, who choking with a tempest of passion that was too great to find utterance in words, had gathered up his rotund figure, and with an agility wonderful in a man of his years and vast obesity, so heavily armed, in a buff coat and jack-boots ribbed with iron, a heavy sword and cloak, clambered on the back of his horse, as a clown would climb up a wall; and with a visage alternating between purple and ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... the cure the Marquise felt no inclination to change her mind. She saw before her a stout, rotund little man, with a ruddy, wrinkled, elderly face, which awkwardly and unsuccessfully tried to smile. His bald, quadrant-shaped forehead, furrowed by intersecting lines, was too heavy for the rest of his face, which seemed ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... a table in the room, could never be got to sit on a chair; and being rotund he sat preferably sidewise on the edge of the table. One of his small feet—his feet were encased in tight, high-heeled, ill-fitting horsemen's boots—usually rested on the floor, the other swung at the end of his stubby leg slowly in the air. This idiosyncrasy his companion, ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... he began to descend. So silently did they make their way down the stone steps, and so intent were the men upon their work, that in a minute after leaving the little gallery Malise stood behind the taller and Sholto stole like a shadow along the wall nearer to the little rotund man who had ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... that mark the zenith hour, How great thy reach, how marvellous thy power, So lavishly outpouring all thy rotund gifts On mortal ways, in superhuman shifts That overtax the mind, and vex the soul of man, As would the details of some awful plan, Jocund, mysterious, complex, and yet withal Enmeshed with Joy and Sorrow, as a pall Envelops all the seas at eventide, and brings New ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... lordship," said a rotund voice from, one of the side tables, "I would suggest that a case like this of grievous moral delinquency comes directly within the dispensation of the chaplain, and if he has done his duty by the unhappy girl (as no doubt he has) he must have a statement to ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... to give the hand in which hers had rested to lead any one else to the dance, and when the rotund Duke of Pomerania invited him to a drinking bout at his quarters at the Green Shield he accepted; for without Eva the hall seemed deserted, the light robbed of its brilliancy, and the gay music ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a profound calm, the silence of terrified suspense, fell over the city. Many a rotund bourgeois, emasculated by a purely commercial life, awaited the arrival of the victors with anxiety, trembling lest their meat-skewers and kitchen carving-knives should come under the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... clothed in their Esquimau garments, and cut the oddest imaginable figures. They had a soft, rotund, cuddled-up appearance, that was powerfully suggestive of comfort. The sledge carried one day's provisions, a couple of walrus harpoons with a sufficient quantity of rope, four muskets with the requisite ammunition, an Esquimau cooking-lamp, two stout spears, two tarpaulins ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... 1799. The deed was done by Jean-Frederic Taillefer, then a surgeon and under-assistant-major in the French army, who suffered his comrade, Prosper Magnan, to be executed for the crime. Wahlenfer was a short, heavy-set man of rotund appearance, with frank and cordial manners. He was proprietor of a large pin-manufactory on the outskirts of Neuwied. He was from Aix-la-Chapelle. Possibly Wahlenfer was an ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... that hath not heard of that precious gift, and none who does not covet it greatly, but there be two degrees of assurance"—here the Rabbi looked sternly at the happy, rotund little figure—"and it is with the first you must begin, and what you need to get ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... because his Beaune wine was so adorable, and because he could keep his own counsel. Slender Ren de Montigny, in a jerkin of rubbed and faded purple velvet, with his malign, Italianate face and his delicate Italianate grace; rotund Guy Tabarie, bluff, red and bald; Casin Cholet, tall and bird-like, with the figure of a stork and the features of a bird of prey; Jehan le Loup, who looked as vulpine as his nickname; these Robin Turgis eyed and catalogued ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... am concerned, there are no plays nor newspapers. All such things have vanished with the vanished world. All that exists is the Elsinore, with her queer human freightage and her cargo of coal, cleaving a rotund of ocean of which the skyline ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... of capacious size, tied closely round the waist with one of those parti-colored worsted sashes, we have, on a former occasion described as peculiar to the bourgeois settlers of the country. Next, suffering his eye to descend on and admire the rotund and fleshy thigh, let it drop gradually to the stout and muscular legs, which he must invest in a pair of closely fitting leathern trowsers, the wide-seamed edges of which are slit into innumerable small strips, much after the fashion of the American Indian. When he has completed ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... He was a rotund, good-humoured man with a shining red nose and a husky voice. He grew so much interested in telling me about his lodges that I think (I think) he forgot momentarily that he was selling corn-planters, which was certainly ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson |
