"Portly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was a familiar one in the card-room of the Rag and Bobtail, at the bow-window of the Jeunesse Doree. Tall and pompous, with a portly frame and a puffy clean-shaven face which peered over an abnormally high collar and old-fashioned linen cravat, he stood as a very type and emblem of staid middle-aged respectability. The major's hat was always of the glossiest, the major's coat was without a ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... overwhelmed by awful dizziness, which numbed and paralyzed all sensation. Don Marzio, in form an athlete, in heart a lion, but a man of sudden, sanguine temperament, bustled up and darted out of the room with the ease of a man never burdened with a wife, with kith or kin. Donna Betta, a portly matron, also rose instinctively; but I—I never could account for the odd freak—laid hold of her arm, bidding her stay. The roar of eight hundred houses—or how many more can there be in Aquila?—all reeling and quaking, the yells of ten ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... by the foliage of a tree which stood near, and whose leafy boughs drooped over the pile of stones, as if to protect the rude fane from the decay to which it was rapidly hastening. The image itself was nothing more than a grotesquely shaped log, carved in the likeness of a portly naked man with the arms clasped over the head, the jaws thrown wide apart, and its thick shapeless legs bowed into an arch. It was much decayed. The lower part was overgrown with a bright silky moss. Thin spears of grass sprouted from the distended mouth, ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... former one dull evening, in the dullest of all his dull humours, and of such the lonely bachelor had many, he sighed, kicked his shins, and looked into his books; but as that was like gazing upon a very ugly face, he shut them again, and rang the bell. It was answered by a portly dame, whose age might be about some four or five and forty, whose complexion was fair, whose chubby cheeks were brilliantly rosy, and whose black eyes were so vividly lustrous, that one might have fancied the delicate cap-border near them, in danger from their fire. Over her full-formed bust, she ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... High, Low, and Broad Church—thinks it his or her daily duty to decide, if the formula—Quamdiu se bene gesserit—has been duly complied with. Perhaps foreign air and warmer climates develop, like a hot-bed, our innate instinct of destructiveness. Look at portly respectable fathers of families—householders who, at home, have accepted their spiritual position without a murmur for a quarter of a century, roused to revolt by no vexed question of copes, candles, or church-rates—even ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... news to send you, but the massacre of St. Cas,(959) not agreeable enough for a letter, I stayed till I had something to send you, and behold a book! I have delivered to portly old Richard, your ancient nurse, the new produce of the Strawberry press. You know that the wife of Bath is gone to maunder at St. Peter, and before he could hobble to the gate, my Lady Burlington, cursing and blaspheming, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... equal rapidity, but with better fortune, I had but just time to spring into the street, at the instant when the old lady, writhing herself out of the window, which was now uppermost, was about to trust her portly person to chance. I caught her as she clung to the carriage with her many-braceleted arms, and was almost strangled by the vigour of her involuntary embrace as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... Foster had been ready to "chaff" Dick Lee, or even Dab Kinzer, he knew enough to speak respectfully to the portly and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... moment Tomlinson himself, imperturbable and portly, announced that dinner was served. The three descended the stairs, chatting lightly about the musical comedy witnessed overnight. It was no new revelation to Theydon that truth should prove stranger than fiction, but the trite phrase was fast assuming a fresh and sinister personal significance. ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... 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 greatcoat. As he glanced down the advertisement column, with his head thrust ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... yawned. Then he glanced round the barrack-room with an air of weariness. Sergeant Colgan, his tunic unbuttoned, his grey flannel shirt open at the neck, dozed uncomfortably in a corner. Moriarty looked at him enviously. The sergeant was much the older man of the two, and was besides of portly figure. Sleep came easily to him under the most unpromising circumstances. Moriarty was not more than twenty four years of age. He was mentally and physically an active man. Before he went to work on "The Minstrel Boy" he had wooed sleep ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... who had to do with all the letting and taking, overhauling and repairing, of most of the habitations in our neighbourhood. He was a portly, oily personage; one who clipped his English royally, and walked, through the effects of bunions, I believe— although some mistook it for gout, and gave him the credit of being afflicted with that painful but aristocratic malady—as if he were continuously on pattens, or wore ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... trio made their entry. Foremost was the mistress of the mansion, Mrs. Judith Justitia Pimble. What a puny, trembling thing appeared the husband, as he stood there like a galvanized mummy in presence of that tall, portly woman, with her broad shoulders and commanding aspect! Her first act was to smother the fire; her second, to throw open the windows; her third, to ensconce herself in her liege lord's easy-chair, and bid her guests lay aside ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... their bosoms, and looked as if they were attired at a very small expense. Only the general—the captain-general (Pooch, they told us, was his name: I know not how 'tis written in Spanish)—was well got up, with a smart hat, a real feather, huge stars glittering on his portly chest, and tights and boots of the first order. Presently, after a good deal of trumpeting, the little men marched off the place, Pooch and his staff coming into the very inn in which we were ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of old with the habits of the Euclid House, Theodore chose next day the hour when he judged that Tommy would be most at leisure, and sought him out. The landlord was a trifle grayer, decidedly more portly, but was in other respects the same smooth-tongued, affable host that he was when Tode Mall ran hither and thither to do his bidding. Theodore attempted nothing with him further than to beg a few minutes' chat with Tommy. He was directed to the identical little room with its patch ...
— Three People • Pansy
... brain immediately raised up the portly figure of his tutor before him, raising his eyebrows, and questioning him about why he was there; but these thoughts were chased away directly after, as he came to an opening in the trees, through which he could look right away to where the river went ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... waiting for us outside his shop door, and hastened to open the carriage door himself. He was a round-faced, portly little man, with a short black moustache, black eyebrows, and close-cropped, thick, flour-white hair. The good fellow helped grandmother to alight from the carriage: shook hands with Lorand, and began to speak to them in German: when I alighted, he put his ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... happy to say that such is the case," said a voice from the oak staircase, and down it was slowly proceeding Lord Erymanth, as trim, and portly, and well brushed-up as if he had arrived ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... good night and ascended to the little room prepared for me. There was a great pincushion on the sprigged and portly toilet table, and I laboured till the constellations had changed beyond my window, in printing from a box of tiny pins upon that lavendered mound, ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... called "The Gables," and was an offshoot of a former ancient school connected with the famous parish church. In my time this "academy" was carried on as a private venture by a certain James Anthony Bown, a portly old ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... on the hearth rug. Mrs. Travers was in a chair, a portly woman with a not unkindly face, but the brusque manner many Englishwomen acquire after forty. She held Sara Lee's hand and gave her a complete if ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... He appeared suddenly at a door of my ateliers on the flying ground at Mineola, very tall, very soigne, smiling in the way he had that showed all his strong, square teeth as he recognized me in conversation, with my faithful mechanician, Georges. This latter, grown portly and nervous since marrying a Montmartre shopkeeper, I have since promoted to ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... happiness to insure before thinking of the possible injury to his non-existent parishioners. If he was doing Whippingham Parva or Norton-cum-Sutton out of an eloquent and valuable potential rector, if he was depriving the Church in the next half-century of a dignified and portly prospective archdeacon, he is at least making his father's last days brighter and more comfortable than his early ones had ever been. And then, was not music, too, in its own way, a service, a liturgy, a worship? Surely he could do higher good to men's souls—as they call them—to ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... he went into the house and came back immediately bringing a lamp in one hand—for it had grown pretty dark—and a familiar, portly, blue-bound book in the other. While he ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... it is Black Wings!" barked Stubby, while Button meowed, "You have grown portly since I saw you last, and are much more eatable looking than you were then, though you looked very good to me that day I was starving and tried to catch you to eat." And they all laughed, for once Button had nearly caught Black Wings, but he proved too quick for the half starved cat and ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery
... lucre) with her, without avail: it was the grandes vacances, the ladies were out, M. Heger was engaged, we could not be gratified,—unless, indeed, we were patrons of the school. At this juncture a portly, ruddy-faced lady of middle age and most courteous of speech and manner appeared, and, addressing us in faultless English, introduced herself as Mademoiselle Heger, co-directress of the pensionnat, and "wholly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... of the people, and naked to the waist, being in the king's presence. His appearance was so much altered from what it had been the day before, that I had some difficulty to recollect him. He appeared now very lusty, and had a most portly paunch, which it was impossible to discern under the long spacious robes of war. His hair was of a fine silvery grey; and his countenance was the most engaging and truly good-natured which I ever beheld in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... Berry. "For-r-a-r-d! Out of the way, fat face, or we'll take the coat off your back." A portly Frenchman leaped into safety with a scream. "That's the style. For-rard! Fill the fife, dear heart, fill the blinkin' fife; there's a ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... the weight of every variety of food filled half the room, leaving very little space for the guests. The sopranos got in first, ahead even of the amiable hostess, who stopped the whole procession, trying to go abreast through the door with a portly cardinal and a white diplomat, leaving us, the hungry black and white sheep, still wrestling with ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... portly, somewhat worn perhaps, but otherwise strong-looking, old woman, with a good broad face, and thin grey hair drawn down behind her ears. She was not unused to being disturbed at night, one of her occupations being to nurse sick people; but she ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... lordship would refresh his portly person in the bath, an officer of high rank shelters his noble head with a great umbrella of crimson and gold, while others wave golden fans before him. On these occasions he is invariably preceded by musicians, who announce his approach with ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... before suffer the monks and civil guards, because of their want of manners," a portly lady was saying, "but now that I see of what service they are, I could almost marry one ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... and his kneeling son? I believe THAT would be the thing!—But the plate must be surfaced so that A.J.M. mayn't exhaust all the good impressions. If Herkomer would etch that, and add a vignette of a scene I could give him with a beautiful peasant girl—or of the old sergeant and the portly and worldly "Madame," we SHOULD "do lovely!" Will ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... mayor's portrait, and he admitted that he was confoundedly short of money. The painter was anxious that Lavengro should sit to him for his Plutarch, which honour that gentleman firmly declined. Years afterwards he saw the portrait of the mayor, a 'mighty portly man, with a bull's head, black hair, a body like a dray horse, and legs and thighs corresponding; a man six foot high at the least. To his bull's head, black hair and body, the painter had done justice; there was one point, however, in which the portrait did not correspond ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... spoke English intermingled with Gipsy, stopping from time to time to explain to his assistant, or to teach him a word. This portly person appeared to be about as well up in the English Gipsy as myself—that is, he knew it quite as imperfectly. I learned that the master had been in America, and made New York and Brooklyn glad by his presence, while ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... the better," replied Camille. "I do love him—far too much for my own peace of mind. He may, perhaps, have had a passing fancy for you; for you are, you know, enchantingly fair, while I am as black as a crow; you are slim and willowy, while I have a portly dignity; in short, you are young!—that's the final word, and you have not spared it to me. You have abused your advantages as a woman against me. I have done my best to prevent what has now happened. However little of a woman you may think ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... for enjoyment. I went from Dover, and in the steamer there was the most infernally pretty girl. Black, mischievous eyes, with the devil's light in them; hair curly, crispy, frisky, luxuriant, all tossing over her head and shoulders, and an awfully enticing manner. A portly old bloke was with her—her father, I afterward learned. Somehow my hat blew off. She laughed. I laughed. Our eyes met. I made a merry remark. She laughed again; and there we were, introduced. She gave me a little felt hat of her own. I fastened it on in triumph ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... patron of philanthropic and industrial institutions, has been a national figure of the utmost dignity. Had you dropped into the Spring Garden Market in Philadelphia forty years ago, you would have found a portly gentleman, clad in a white apron, and armed with a cleaver, presiding over a shop decorated with the design—"Peter A. B. Widener, Butcher." He was constantly joking with his customers and visitors, and in the evening ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... shorter and broader, altogether a more portly little person, with a clever face, dreamy, questioning grey eyes, and a nose which was decidedly a snub—a fact there was no getting over, though Penelope often tried. Her hair, which was short and curly, was not so golden as Esther's; it ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... styled Stores Superintendent. I thought him the most impressive looking man I had ever seen. He overpowered me; in his presence I never felt at ease. He was a big man, and looked bigger than he was; good-looking too; ruddy, portly, well-dressed and formal. An embodiment of commercial energy and dignity. In his face gravity, keenness, and good health were blended. Soon after I joined his staff he left the Caledonian to become ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... arrived in the camp, where, having seen us coming, all the Boers were gathered. They are not a particularly humorous people, but this spectacle of the advance of Pereira seated on the pack-ox, a steed that is becoming to few riders, with the furious and portly Vrouw Prinsloo striding at his side and shrieking abuse at him, caused them to burst into laughter. Then Pereira's temper gave out, and he became even more abusive than ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... church with the sleepy-headed churchwarden, who was now wide awake and mightily concerned to know what horse Mr. Haward meant to enter for the great race at Mulberry Island, while at the foot of the steps he was seized upon by another portly vestryman, and borne off to be presented to three blooming young ladies, quick to second their papa's invitation home to dinner. Mr. Haward was ready to curse his luck that he was engaged elsewhere; ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... 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
... say, but he never went near his native country. For years and years he had lived abroad—not in any settled place of residence: they would travel about, and remain a year or two in one place, a year or two in another, as the whim suited them. A respectable, portly man, of quiet and gentlemanly manners, looking as little like one who need be afraid of the laws of his own land as can be. Neither is it said or insinuated that he was afraid of them. A gentleman who knew him had told, ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... stimulated them greatly. They could not lag behind that smile of hers which she gave them ere she kicked the drawing-room door. Mr. Beebe chirruped. Freddy was at his wittiest, referring to Cecil as the "Fiasco"—family honoured pun on fiance. Mrs. Honeychurch, amusing and portly, promised well as a mother-in-law. As for Lucy and Cecil, for whom the temple had been built, they also joined in the merry ritual, but waited, as earnest worshippers should, for the disclosure of some holier shrine ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... no young person—if person you were going to say. There was a big portly landlord, whom I dare say you have seen; a noisy, savage radical, who wanted at first to fasten upon me a quarrel about America, but who subsequently drew in his horns; then there was a strange fellow, a prowling priest, I believe, ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... through their boughs. There is always a pleasant diversion in a few hours' travel, and Beth found herself drawn from her thoughts by the antics of a negro family at the other end of the car. A portly colored woman presided over them; she had "leben chilen, four dead and gone to glory," as she explained ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... remarked a portly and well-dressed pillar of the church, "I was a good deal surprised. Rather too wild and flowery. Must ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... the portly wife of a merchant, "begging your pardon, this may be a fat instead of a lean sorrow. Leaves the poor ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of a portly man who was stroking his beard the wrong way projected itself upon them from the narrow, green entrance to the grotto. Neither of ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... the king a suitable republican reverence as he passed, which he answered with a gracious smile, and a benignant glance of his royal eye. The Hon. Louis Philippe Orleans, the present sovereign of the French, is a gentleman of portly and commanding appearance, and in his state attire, which he wore on this occasion, looks 'every inch a king.' He rides with grace and dignity, and sets an example of decorum and gravity to his subjects, by the solemnity of his ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... portly Indians much the complections of the Mandans & ricaras high Cheeks, Streight limbed & high noses the men are large, their dress in Sumner is Simpelly a roab of a light buffalow Skin with or without ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... circumstances—which often produce remarkable men from Nature's ordinary handiwork—have produced one such here. Next, leaving him to sidle along the footwalk, cast your eyes in the opposite direction, where a portly female considerably in the wane of life, with a prayer-book in her hand, is proceeding to yonder church. She has the placid mien of settled widowhood. Her regrets have either died away or have become ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... widows in the country-side!" said the Abbot. "Ho! ho! ho!" and he shook his portly sides ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... door, sitting upon the railing, he perceives the portly figure of Mr. O'Brallaghan, who is singing a song of his own composition; not the ditty which has come down to modern times connected with this gentleman's name—but another and more original madrigal. The popular ditty, we have every reason to believe, was afterwards ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... time and space were not to be had, and chaos reigned along with the rats. Our chimney-piece was decorated with a flat-iron, a Bible, a candle minus stick, a lavender bottle, a new tin pan, so brilliant that it served nicely for a pier-glass, and such of the portly black bugs as preferred a warmer climate than the rubbish hole afforded. Two arks, commonly called trunks, lurked behind the door, containing the worldly goods of the twain who laughed and cried, slept and scrambled, in this refuge; while from the ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... having lived at Paris, and seized every occasion ostentatiously to show he was not ignorant of its pleasures and refinements; concealing beneath this film of varnish his inborn rusticity, he assumed as well as he was able the polish of one accustomed to good society. His tall, portly form was always tightly buttoned in a close-fitting uniform, and he lied outrageously about his age, never being able to bring himself to own up to his forty-five years. Had he had more intelligence he might have made himself an object of greater dread, but as it was his over-weening ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... enormous wealth, who had recently been raised to the peerage, was staying at one of our country houses. His daughter, my uncle, and an Italian Abbe were the only guests besides. The merchant was a portly, purple-faced man, who bore his new honours with a curious mixture of assumed pomposity and natural good-humour. The Abbe was dwarfish and deformed, lean, sallow, sharp-featured, with bright bird-like eyes, and a low, liquid voice. He was a political ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... them now: Bayard grown stout, portly, and covered with trinkets, while Leon, who has just entered the first class in pharmacy, has actually become a ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... tables set in the open air, and groaning beneath viands, nutritious and succulent. What swain or yokel had not a meed of praise for the monarch when he beheld this burden of good cheer, and, at the end of each board, elevated a little and garlanded with roses, a rotund and portly cask of wine, with a spigot projecting ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... Portly though she was, she was standing beside Margaret in an instant, clasping her in a motherly embrace and panting for breath. It was evidently too late for Logotheti to draw his glasses and shield over his face, or for Lushington to escape. Each stood stock-still, wondering how long it would ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... slightly portly gentleman of fifty-eight, though he did not look his age, thanks to the correct life he led. He had a military carriage, a rubicund face, a heavy mustache, keen, twinkling eyes, and a head of iron-gray hair. He was a childless widower, and Victor Nevill, the son of his dead ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... and the deep notes of the bassoon ringing clear from amidst the clash of merry voices. Music and careless mirth, the never failing concomitants of an Italian holiday, were here in full ascendency; for the birthday of the portly host happening to fall on the anniversary of St. Geronimo, the yearly festival which served to celebrate the two in one, was a matter of no small interest to the villagers. The dining room was filled almost to suffocation, and it were a matter admitting ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... Melba, and Tetrazzini I once camped in the heart of the Sierras. When I persisted to the uttermost secret corner of the Dolomites, I found myself anticipated by Kreisler and his fiddle. They tell me that the portly Victor Herbert has even penetrated with his daring orchestra through darkest Africa and gone on to arrange a special benefit, in his home town, for the dalai-lama ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... Persis interrupted. "It's just that I've heard of 'em before." As she left the elevator on the second floor, two women glided past her, one the portly widow with abundant crepe who is not easily differentiated, the other a stately girl with blonde hair and a scornfully tilted chin. Instinct told Persis ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... Joe," who lived at Bass Cove, where he shot wild ducks, took some to town for sale, and attracted the attention of a portly gentleman fond of shooting. This gentleman went duck shooting with Joe, and their adventures were more amusing to the boy than to ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... round, and beheld a man with a ruddy, pleasant face, and a stout figure. It was the rich miller from Bex. His broad, portly person, hid the slender, lovely Babette; but she came forward and glanced at him with her bright, dark eyes. The rich miller was very much flattered at the thought that the young man, who was acknowledged ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... the car made me lose my train and I was obliged to take a late train which did not stop at my home. I was still paying for my horse out of my own bone and sinew. At last the luscious green hills, the thick grasses, the tall corn-shocks and the portly hay-stacks of my native valley came in view and they never looked so abundant, so generous, so entirely sufficing to man and beast as now in returning from a land of cold green forests, ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... who put on about six suits, one after another, growing gradually larger, though no taller or fatter—just thick. All these in the hall were meaty, not one with that lean look of the pictures of "Uncle Sam," but more like our "John Bull," only not portly and complacent as he is, but just thick all over, at about the three coat stage; thick noses, thick hair, thick arms, thick legs, and nearly invariably clean-shaven and keen looking. The Senator said they were the ordinary business ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... the portly abbot Murmured, "Why this waste of food? Be it changed to loaves henceforward For ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... Astley's Amphitheatre, and remained amongst other lumber in the property-room, until the late destructive fire which occurred there. On that night, the wife of one of the stage-assistants—a woman of portly dimensions—was aroused from her bed by the alarm of fire, and in her confusion, being unable to find her proper habiliments, laid hold of one of these scrolls, and wrapping it around her, hastily rushed into ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... a tall portly man entered the room with the assurance of one much at home here and, with an exclamation, Irving ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... this noontime luncheon, after talking with the portly, conservative, aggressive Arneel and the shrewd director of the stock-exchange, Cowperwood met a varied company of men ranging in age from thirty-five to sixty-five gathered about the board in a private dining-room ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... trouble commenced when I succeeded in getting the shoes of passengers which had been given to me to polish, badly mixed up. The shoes of a portly red faced man whose berth was in the forward end of the car, I placed by the berth of a tall and slim western yankee at the other end of the car, while a number 7 and a number 9 shoe were placed decorously by ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... is followed closely by a tall, well-groomed, rather portly and florid stranger, with a military moustache, who greets you with the utmost cordiality. "I happened to find myself in this neighbourhood," he says, "and I could not—I really could not—resist this opportunity. My name, I venture to think, is a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... weapon that she had more than once found effectual with her uncle. She flung herself into his arms and clasped him round the neck. He was a short, portly man, and from this position she began to cajole him—while Count Roumovski looked on with amused calm, and his sister, following his lead, ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... stickler for uniform—stopped opposite a very portly sailor whose medal-ribbon was an inch or so too low down. Fixing the man with his eye, the admiral asked: "Did you get that medal for eating, my man?" On the man replying "No, sir," the admiral rapped out: "Then why the deuce do you wear ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... and with needle-like pen, in characters fine as hair, upon a scroll garlanded with forget-me-nots, and borne in mid air by two portly doves, was Charlotte Arnold's name inscribed by the hero of ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a portly woman, with a round face, large forehead, and a little nose which seemed to be always laughing. She was a merry soul; and she used to tell "the children," as Charles and Lucy were called, "Liliputian stories," tales of the Fairy ...
— Little Sky-High - The Surprising Doings of Washee-Washee-Wang • Hezekiah Butterworth
... mother say they sold slaves on what they called an auction block. Jest like if a slave had any portly fine looking children they'd sell them chillun jest like selling cattle. I didn't see this, ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... singing-boys cast the ball into the air, as [58] high as he might, along the vaulted roof of the central aisle to be caught by any boy who could, and tossed again with hand or foot till it passed on to the portly chanters, the chaplains, the canons themselves, who finally played out the game with all the decorum of an ecclesiastical ceremony. It was just then, just as the canons took the ball to themselves so gravely, that Denys—Denys l'Auxerrois, as he was ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... ye 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
... a most exciting moment. For there, facing her portly old father, whose clouded face bespoke his troubled mind, stood her trimly-built young cousin Carausius the admiral, bronzed with his long exposure to the sea-blasts, a handsome young viking, and, in the eyes of the hero-loving Helen, very much of a hero because ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... beginnings the monastic system of Europe arose—that system which presents us with learning in the place of ferocious ignorance, with overflowing charity to mankind in the place of malignant hatred of society. The portly abbot on his easy going palfrey, his hawk upon his fist, scarce looks like the lineal descendant of the hermit starved into insanity. How wide the interval between the monk of the third and the monk of the thirteenth ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... his way across the street to the store where he usually sold his copra. Bullets were pattering on the roof, and the trader himself, a portly German in gold spectacles, ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... from replying by the hasty entrance of a bustling portly personage of loud voice and imperious manner, in whom Plotinus recognised Theocles, ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... hills where I could get a view inland to Kini Balu, over miles of jungle where no white man has ever been. But I wanted to see a little of this country, from the car-window at least. So I entered the station and interviewed the station master, a portly official of great dignity. He told me, in fair English, that the train on the "main line" had left for that day but that I could take a "local" out into the country for about three miles. This was better than nothing, so I climbed (and climb is the proper word) aboard ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... something remarkable that made Norman portly. But as for the shovel hat, Mrs. Meta has insisted on having it sent out. I was going to tell you that she says, "I do like such a good tough bit of stitchery, to fit my knight ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was nearly ten years since the great days of Father David's black mare; she had passed into legend, and Father David, something heavier than he was but no less keen, now followed hounds in more leisurely fashion on the back of the black mare's son, a portly and careful bay cob. ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... complicated technicalities of Roman law chose to mete out. Through a crowd of anxious loungers the youth passed to the apse of the upper end, in which the Prefect's throne stood empty, and then turned into aside chamber, where he found himself alone with the secretary, a portly Chaldee eunuch, with a sleek pale face, small pig's eyes, and an enormous turban. The man of pen and paper took the letter, opened it with solemn deliberation, and then, springing to his feet, darted out of the room in most ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... crony of his, one Bob Still, would come in; and then they would occupy the sentry-box together, and swill their beer in concert. This pot-friend of Danby was portly as a dray-horse, and had a round, sleek, oily head, twinkling eyes, and moist red cheeks. He was a lusty troller of ale-songs; and, with his mug in his hand, would lean his waddling bulk partly out ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... tumult of townsfolk, military chieftains, men-at-arms; the pictures of sombre interiors, and southern gardens, the hillside castle amid its vines, the court of love with its contending minstrels, the midnight camp lit by its fires; and, added to these, the Titianesque portraits of portly magnifico and gold-haired maiden, and thought-worn statist make up an environment which has no inconsiderable poetic value of its own, feeding, as it does, the inner eye with various forms and dyes, and leaving the "spirit in sense" more wealthy. With ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... 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 ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... deposit for the interior from the earliest times. In the rainy season the whole site is flooded, and only the upper stories are habitable. Cock-fighting seems to be the chief amusement. We breakfasted with the governor, a portly gentleman who kept a little dry-goods store. His excellency, without waiting for a formal introduction, and with a cordiality and courtesy almost confined to the Latin nations, received us into his ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... establishment; it was as clean and sweet as a kitchen. The little lamb, three days old, was brought out for my amusement, and doubtless pleased its mamma very much by showing off, and saying "baa," like a dutiful child! What a funny party we were, the portly commodore with your small aunty leaning on his arm, he sliding through narrow doors sideways, pulling me after him; then tall grandpa, and our little thin surgeon following in his train! I asked the head steward to tell me how much he cooked every day ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... Lagoon is the story of two cousins, Dicky and Emmeline Lestrange, stranded on a remote island with a beautiful lagoon. As children, they are cared for by Paddy Button, a portly sailor who drinks himself to death after only two and a half years in paradise. Frightened and confused by the man's gruesome corpse, the children flee to another part of Palm Tree Island. Over a period of five years, they grow up and eventually ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... flying from the judges' stand; a brass band in the upper story of that structure thrilled the air with the vibrations of popular waltzes and marches, somewhat marred now and then by mysteriously discordant bass tones; the judges, portly, red-faced, middle-aged gentlemen, sat below in cane-bottom chairs critically a-tilt on the hind legs. The rough wooden amphitheatre, a bold satire on the stately Roman edifice, was filled with the denizens of Colbury and the rosy ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... native visitors flocked to see them, and Doctor Johnson, a resident English physician, was constant in his attendance, knowing that the Consul must pay his bill. Three French priests also called upon them, one of whom proved to be no Frenchman, but a portly, handsome, good-humoured Irishman, well known and much disliked by the Polynesian protestant missionaries. A strong attempt was made by Guy and Wilson to get the men to do duty. A schooner was about to sail for Sydney, and they were threatened to be sent thither ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... too, were his eyes, though these she could not see, and the lashes over them, while his hands were long and fine. He looked most lonely and pathetic, there in the big oak chair that had so often accommodated the portly forms of departed abbots, and her warm heart went out towards him. Of course Isobel knew him, but not very well, for he was a shy lad and her father had never encouraged intimacy between the Abbey House and ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... hangings of the apartment moving in front of her, and perceiving a bulky protuberance, she immediately divined that the mayoress was hiding behind there, and that the protuberance was caused by her portly form. Now she discovered the mayor's design, and that it was probably a caprice of his spouse, and she made a vow not to suffer herself to be shorn unless she acquired by these means the five hundred maravedis needful to pay the Arabian physician who would give her father back ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... Ivan Ivan'itch, he belongs to the old school; but the two men must be contrasted rather than compared. The difference in their lives and characters is reflected in their outward appearance. Ivan Ivan'itch, as we know, is portly in form and heavy in all his movements, and loves to loll in his arm-chair or to loaf about the house in a capacious dressing-gown. The General, on the contrary, is thin, wiry, and muscular, wears habitually a close-buttoned military tunic, and always has a stern expression, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... rather good-natured portly woman with a taste for exaggerated garments which suggested the operatic stage. She met Patricia on the threshold, and patted her shoulder kindly as she led her ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... has come one of the proprietors, or superintendents, of a caravan of animals,—a large, portly paunched, dark-complexioned, brandy-burnt, heavy-faced man of about fifty; with a diminutive nose in proportion to the size of his face,—thick lips; nevertheless he has the air of a man who has seen much, and derived such experience as was for his purpose. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... rattling, creaking noise, as if a beam of timber, with pulley and chain, was being raised from behind the entrance. When the sound ceased the door yielded to the padre's sturdy shoulder, and there was just room to admit his portly body. Here the passage was wider, the rock evidently chiseled away by the hands of man, and on one side was an artificial chamber, blasted out of the solid rock, with a narrow door with heavy iron bolts on the outside. At this opening ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... with flowers, and a Japanese bonze was riding along on a griffin; a slim Venetian rapier had come to blows with a stout Ferrara sabre, all about a little pale-faced chit of a damsel in white Nymphenburg china; and a portly Franconian pitcher in gres gris was calling aloud, "Oh, these Italians! always at feud!" But nobody listened to him at all. A great number of little Dresden cups and saucers were all skipping and ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... voice came forward; a portly, respectable landlady. She surveyed Dolly, glanced at the cab, became very civil, invited Dolly in, and sent the maid upstairs to make inquiries, declaring she did not know herself whether the gentleman were out or in. Dolly would not sit down. The girl brought down word that ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... deference and authority the phrase is capable of. Mr. Biggar, having in his early Parliamentary days defied the Chair and affronted the sensibilities of the House, alike in the matter of dress and deportment, developed into a portly gentleman of almost smug appearance, a terror to new members. Woe to any who in his ignorance passed between the Chair and the member addressing it; who walked in from a division with his hat on; or who stood an inch ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... irrevocable to go so cheap, even to a hero. For only mark him when he is petitioned by heroes and heroines to undo what he does so easily! That small archway of Doctors' Commons seems the eye of a needle, through which the lean purse has a way, somehow, of slipping more readily than the portly; but once through, all are camels alike, the lean purse an especially big camel. Dispensing tremendous marriage as it does, the Law can ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to remain with her until one or the other of her brothers or sisters might be ready to take her in charge, either by moving into her abode or by her going to them. Hoshkanyi, therefore, had temporarily gone to live with his mother, but his portly consort was careful not to let him go alone. They had no children, and she felt constrained to keep an ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... a sample of the native race, but very sparingly represented in the city at any time. A dignified and portly gentleman is rolling along, with an air as though the place belonged to him. He is a Maori, as we plainly see; moreover, he is a chief, and is at present a member of the House of Representatives. There ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... the harsh, dogged, uncouth evangel, preaching his strange mission of honor; to Wayne, patient, silent, laborious, dependable; to young Denton, a "gentleman unafraid," facing the threats of E.M. Pierce; even to portly Shearson, struggling against such dismal odds for his poor little principle of journalism—to make the paper pay. How could he, their leader, recant his doctrine ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... was an elderly, pimply-faced, vegetable diet sort of man, in a black coat, and dark-mixtured trousers; and Mr. Dodson was a plump, portly, stern-looking man, with a loud voice. And it was from these worthies that Mr. Pickwick had received a letter dated the 28th of ...
— The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick - A Lecture • Frank Lockwood
... his face, lo, and behold! the moon shining in the Nor-west—yea, the sun blazing in his glory—had not a more crimson aspect than Reuben. Like the pig-eyed Chinese folk on tea-cups, his peepers were diminutive and twinkling; but his nose made up for them—and that it did—being portly in all its dimensions broad and long, as to colour, liker a radish than any other production in nature. In short, he was as bonny a figure as ever man of woman born clapped eye on; and was cleaving away most devoutly, at a side of black-faced mutton, when the woman, as I said before, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... was a young man who had never seen Marion. The great generals whom he was accustomed to see, were great of limb, portly, and huge of proportion. Such was Cornwallis, and others of the British army. Such, too, was the case among the Americans. The average weight of these opposing generals, during that war, is stated at more than two hundred pounds. The successes of Marion must naturally ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... We were in a great stone-flagged room, low-roofed, with dark cupboard door; not cheerful, I fancy, in the mere light of day: but nothing could resist the influence of those pine-knot flames. Maria herself was a portly fat woman, as far as possible from handsome; but she looked at me with a whole world of kindness in her dark face. Indeed, I saw the same kindness more or less shining out upon me in all the faces there. I cannot tell the mixed joy and ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... there was no time to say more, for at this moment the portly figure and the great face of Dr. Boomer, president of Plutoria University, loomed upon them. And with him came a great burst of conversation that blew all previous topics into fragments. He was introduced ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock |
