"Portly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... He was a portly man, with a place in the country, and a house in town; not rich for his position, but well off; a magistrate, and much respected; well educated in the ideas of the ancients, with whom his own ideas on many subjects stopped short, and hardly to be called ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... would be somewhat dangerous unless he was thrown off his guard and "rattled." The witness in question—an influential man, whose vulnerable point was said to be his self-esteem—was ushered into the box, a portly overdressed person, beaming with self-assurance. Looking him over for a few minutes without saying a word Sir James opened fire: "Mr. Tompkins, I believe?"—"Yes."—"You are a stockbroker, I believe, are you not?"—"I ham." Pausing for a few seconds and making an attentive survey of him, Sir ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... was done, and the scooter departed back to the inspection ship. A few moments later they saw it returning, this time carrying just three men. In addition to the pilot and one technician, there was a single passenger: a portly figure dressed in a black robe, horn-rimmed ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... and must not hurry or overwork herself. Yesterday I saw Cardinal Wiseman and heard him speak. It was at a meeting for the Roman Catholic Society of St. Vincent de Paul; the Cardinal presided. He is a big portly man something of the shape of Mr. Morgan; he has not merely a double but a treble and quadruple chin; he has a very large mouth with oily lips, and looks as if he would relish a good dinner with a bottle of wine after it. He came swimming into the room smiling, simpering, and bowing like a ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... could see around the furnace, and, sure enough, some one WAS asleep there. Only, it was not one of the servants; it was a portly policeman, with a newspaper and an empty plate on the floor on one side, and a champagne bottle on the other. He had slid down in his chair, with his chin on his brass buttons, and his helmet had rolled a dozen feet away. Bella had to clap her hand ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 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
... portly man in the prime of life, with a face too yellow, fat, and cunning to be considered exactly handsome. He wore gaiters, and a large diamond breast-pin, and advanced with a series of low ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... 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
... portly and robust figure; and it was easily seen that one leg of his ample pantaloons would have been sufficient to have made a pair for the thin limbs and meagre body ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... portly person, wearing, indeed, a frock coat, a sash, and peg top trousers, appeared in the doorway of the presidential mansion. He also wore an expression of deep amazement. He glanced from the tall smiling youth to the diminutive General, on whom his ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... 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 |
