"Portly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not exist for Lady Chaloner, one of the leaders of English Society in Schleppenheim. She took bazaars for granted, as she did everything else. She was one of the very pillars of the social fabric of her country. She was of noble blood, she was portly, she was decidedly middle-aged. She had been recommended to diet herself and to drink the waters of Schleppenheim, and as she did so in company with half the distinguished people in Europe, she was quite content to follow the course prescribed. In these days when everything is called into question, ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... black and red brick, and double; that is, with two windows on each side of a white Doric doorway, having something portly about it. I use the word as Dr. Johnson defines it: a house of port, with a look of sufficiency, and, too, of ready hospitality, which was due, I think, to the upper half of the door being open a good part of the year. I recall ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... them—standing erect behind her chair at the head of the table, supported by one or more of the staff. To suit the season she was draped in a shawl of crimson wool, which reached to the flounce of her skirt, and was borne by her portly shoulders with the grace of a past day. Beneath the shawl, her dresses were built, year in, year out, on the same plan: cut in one piece, buttoning right down the front, they fitted her like an eelskin, rigidly outlining ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... unknown regions of the Northwest, lay piled up to the beams—skins of the smooth beaver, the delicate otter, black and silver fox, so rich to the eye and silky to the touch that the proudest beauties longed for their possession; sealskins to trim the gowns of portly burgomasters, and ermine to adorn the robes of nobles and kings. The spoils of the wolf, bear, and buffalo, worked to the softness of cloth by the hands of Indian women, were stored for winter wear and to fill the sledges with warmth and comfort when the northwest wind freezes the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... appearances, you would never have taken this portly, rubicund, iron-gray, bushy-browed gentleman for a statesman. But a statesman he was for all that, and the Emperor and Germany miss him sorely. I would have taken him for a Boer Dopper or an English yeoman. This suggestion ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... four horses greatly heated and jaded, drawing one of the court coaches; and as it stopped at the castle gate, two ladies became visible within it—the portly form of Queen Catherine, and on the back seat the graceful figure of Diane ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... portly, carries her fifty-five years with buoyancy. She is a good-natured woman, with purple cheeks, a wide mouth, and a small nose; one connects something indefinable in her appearance with church on Sundays, so that one learns without surprise that ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... tall and portly form of Mycroft Holmes was ushered into the room. Heavily built and massive, there was a suggestion of uncouth physical inertia in the figure, but above this unwieldy frame there was perched a head so masterful in its brow, so alert in its steel-gray, deep-set eyes, so firm in its lips, and ...
— The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans • Arthur Conan Doyle
... is commonly the whale whose distant jet is so often descried by passengers crossing the Atlantic, in the New York packet-tracks. In the length he attains, and in his baleen, the Fin-back resembles the right whale, but is of a less portly girth, and a lighter colour, approaching to olive. His great lips present a cable-like aspect, formed by the intertwisting, slanting folds of large wrinkles. His grand distinguishing feature, the fin, from which he derives his name, is often a conspicuous object. ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... 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 intellectual; ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... might for their own personal ends. And exceedingly few members of any Government whatsoever would have the courage to tell a well-dressed and arrogant woman to go to the devil, even when that answer happened to be the sole correct answer to an impertinence. Wellington merely damned the portly darlings, but then Wellington, though preposterous as a politician, ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... He was a tall, portly man, with a kindly face, clean shaven except for a pair of close-cropped, iron-gray side whiskers. I was sure I had seen him before, but couldn't think ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... and see them,' added the third lady—a portly, cordial, goodnatured dame, whom Lady Conway introduced as Mrs. Mansell, who had known his mother well; and Louis making a kind of presentation of his cousin James, the two elder ladies were located on two of the chairs: the younger one, as if trying to be out of the way, placed herself on ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... leapt within me at the sound, and running to the side we saw a boat with five men in her pulling towards us. An oldish man of portly figure, who looked like a ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... in the service, was mentally and physically vigorous, and had no fear of responsibility. Robert Montgomery[9] was then chief civil officer at Lahore. He was of a most gentle and benevolent nature, with a rubicund countenance and a short, somewhat portly figure, which characteristics led to his being irreverently called 'Pickwick,' and probably if he had lived in less momentous times he would never have been credited with the great qualities which the crisis in the Punjab proved ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... like children, these little people of the Antarctic world, either like children, or like old men, full of their own importance and late for dinner, in their black tail-coats and white shirt-fronts—and rather portly withal. We used to sing to them, as they to us, and you might often see "a group of explorers on the poop, singing 'She has rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, and she shall have music wherever she goes,' and so on at the top of their voices ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... knows you—you and your children! It sees you fat of figure, an Adam's apple struggling with your every vowel, ponderous of temperament. It sees you a sullen and varicose mistress, whose draperies hang heavy and ludicrous from a pudgy form. It sees you a portly, pursy, foolish Undine struggling awkwardly from out a cyclopean vat of beer. It hears your music in the ta-tata-tata-ta-ta of your "Ach, du lieber Augustin" alone; the sum of your sentiment in your "Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten." Wise American journalists, commissioned ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... 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 ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Dwarkanauth Tagore, who happened to be there that morning, and Dr. Chalmers, as they were conversing together. The swarthy, half-timid, yet elegant face and form of the Indian made a fine contrast with the florid, portly, yet intellectually luminous appearance of the Doctor; half shepherd, half orator, he looked a Shepherd King opposed to some ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... came, and with it the expected guests. The meeting house was crowded. There were many ministers and lay delegates in the council. In the chair sat a venerable preacher, not unknown in the records of those days,—a portly man, with a shrewd and kindly face. Sterner faces were there also. The council wore a grave aspect, more like a court of judges before whom a criminal is cited to appear than an assembly of clergymen about to ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... Hospital boys, above any fear which his presence among them when living could ever produce. And if the impressions which were made on my mind so long ago are to be trusted, very richly did their steward deserve this tribute. It is a pleasure to me even now to call to mind his portly form, the regal awe which he always contrived to inspire, in spite of a tenderness and even weakness of nature that would have enfeebled the reins of discipline in any other master; a yearning of tenderness towards those under his protection, which could ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... admirable; he chooses what is good and knows what is not. A little representative collection of the bad or foolish English of his day might be made by gathering up what Dickens forbore and what he derided; for instance, Mr. Micawber's portly phrase, "gratifying emotions of no common description," and Littimer's report that "the young woman was partial to the sea." This was the polite language of that time, as we conclude when we find it to be the language that ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... behind them, and the two captains turned their heads. A portly, broad-shouldered gentleman, in a suit of snuff colour, came slowly across the court, with both hands behind him, and a cane rapping ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... caress from madame 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 ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... hack should be in thorough keeping with that of the rider. A slight lady has a greater range of choice in horseflesh than a portly dame, who would be best suited with a weight-carrying hunter or compact cob. The height might vary from 14-2 to 15-3. I hardly think that even a small woman would look well on a pony ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... scrolls had been thrown aside after one of the grand spectacles at 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 ...
— Punch, Volume 101, Jubilee Issue, July 18, 1891 • Various
... upon and were presented to Black Smith, the most influential and authoritative of the Seneca sachems. He is about sixty years old, is somewhat portly, is easy enough in his manners, and is well disposed, and even kindly towards all who convinced him that they have no sinister designs in ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... truthfully enough described by Mr. Swancourt. She was not physically attractive. She was dark—very dark—in complexion, portly in figure, and with a plentiful residuum of hair in the proportion of half a dozen white ones to half a dozen black ones, though the latter were black indeed. No further observed, she was not a woman to like. But there was more to see. To the most superficial critic it was apparent that ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... There they were, in the Oriental pomp of richly embroidered robes, and quaintly-artificial coiffure. There also were portrayed their deeds in peace and war, their audiences, battles, sieges, lion-hunts, &c. My mind was overpowered by the contemplation of so many strange objects; and some of them, the portly forms of kings and vizirs, were so life-like, and carved in such fine relief, that they might almost be imagined to be stepping from the walls to question the rash intruder on their privacy. Then mingled with them were other monstrous shapes—the old Assyrian deities, with human ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... Caledonian Railway is situated. The head of the department was 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 General Manager of Young's Paraffin Oil Company, and subsequently its Managing Director. ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... 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 ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... upstairs to a large room, which was lighted by a fire blazing in the hearth. Standing with his back to this was a gentleman whom he at once recognized, from his mother's description, as her uncle, although he was a good deal more portly than when she had seen ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... at the door, her butterfly turban somewhat deranged with the violence of her prostration, giving a whimsical air to her portly person. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... Doctrine—I studied it at College, and I know that many serious people believe it—which maintains that all men, in spite of appearances and pretensions, all live alike for Pleasure. This theory certainly brings portly, respected persons very near to me. Indeed with a sense of low complicity I have sometimes followed and watched a Bishop. Was he too on the hunt for Pleasure, ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... would have made it had it not been for a portly individual in shirt-sleeves who inadvertently blocked the doorway of the telegraph office. Bartley bumped into this portly person, tried to squeeze past, did so, and promptly caromed off the station agent whom he met head on, halfway across ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... of the country and the long empty road. The woods stirred; a bird called; a portly hare poked his nose through the brush over the way, and suddenly scuttled off, his white flag up. In Mrs, Thurston's ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... his nether-lip, his florid face a thought less florid than its wont, his prominent blue eyes a thought more prominent. Under its golden periwig old Nick Trenchard's wizened countenance was darkened by a scowl, and his fingers, long, swarthy, and gnarled, drummed fretfully upon the table. Portly Lord Gervase Scoresby—their host, a benign and placid man of peace, detesting turbulence—turned crimson now in wordless rage. The others gaped and stared—some at young Westmacott, some at the man he had so grossly affronted—whilst in ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... ancient literature, and to his last days read the Greek classics in the original. A rare scholar, a lover of books, his tastes were eminently domestic; he was, from his nature, much secluded from the busy world around him. Nearly six feet high, rather portly and dignified, as is shown by his portrait, taken when he was about sixty years of age—he was kind and obliging to all, and emphatically a true Virginia gentleman of the old school. His sympathies during the War of Secession, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... occupies two portly volumes. Each of the relics contains a story in itself,—a story that has often ended in a shameful death. To recall them would be beyond the scope of ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... the Post, the curate seized his hat, started at a rapid pace for the Vicarage, and was soon seated tete-a-tete with his superior, an amiable old gentleman with a portly presence and an abiding faith in his assistant's ability to do the whole ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... their own, and the young girls are frolicsome as gazelles and far less timid. They have none of the pseudo-bashfulness of the townsfolk. For the rest, only the dessus du panier of womankind goes veiled hereabouts—a few portly dames of Gafsa, that is, who are none the worse, I suspect, for keeping their features hidden. Perhaps the good looks of these Leila people are a heritage from olden days, for this oasis is known to be a race islet, inhabited almost exclusively by men ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... every portly alderman, In linen suit arrayed, Manipulates the palm-leaf fan And seeks the cooling shade; And he perspires who not in vain Suggests his funny squibs, By poking his unwelcome cane ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... the manufactories,—the sound of the loom and the anvil comes up to us even here; and down by the banks of the river, away westward, as far as the eye can see, up spring clean bright houses of the wealthy manufacturers and traders of Rouen,—rich, sleek, and portly gentlemen with the thinnest boots, who never even pass down the old streets if they can help it, but whom we shall find very pleasant and hospitable; and with whom we may sit down at a cafe under the trees and play at dominoes in the open street, in the middle of the ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... gentleman who was sitting on a camp stool with a portfolio on his knee, taking a sketch of the Roman Camp, which, as has been already said, was within the enclosed domain of Mr. Crotchet. The young stranger, who had climbed over the fence, espying the portly divine, rose up, and hoped that he was not trespassing. "By no means, sir," said the divine, "all the arts and sciences are welcome here; music, painting, and poetry; hydrostatics and political economy; meteorology, transcendentalism, ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... never 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 of them. ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... aged and most of them portly. There were so many that they filled all the chairs and the long claw-foot sofa besides. Georgina sat on a foot-stool, her hands folded in her lap until the others took out their knitting and embroidery. Then she ran to get the napkin she was hemming. ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... way in which it lives up to its standard than by the standard itself, which among some Western nations is not always strictly observed. The whole subject of morality between the sexes is one upon which a portly volume might be written. The sexual relations have been affected by many circumstances, some of them entirely conventional and having little or nothing to do with morality as such, while poetry and romance and sentiment have been allowed to complicate, ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... Men and women, boys and girls, are there—the men and women at a short distance from each other. Immediately above the water are platforms with huge stationary umbrellas over them, and on these men are squatted, whose portly appearance betokens ease and plenty. These are Gungaputrs—sons of the Ganges—a class of Brahmans, whose duty it is to take care of the clothes of the people as they bathe, to put a mark on their forehead to show they have bathed, and who receive a small offering from ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... 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 ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... his wife. Home then he hurried in response to the pleading of his sister, but the moment the Lenox visit was over and Miss Haight returned to New York thither went Loring to find his fiancee at the piano, with a middle-aged, somewhat portly civilian bending eagerly over her and so engrossed that he never saw or heard the intruder. This was November fourth. The engagement was barely six weeks old, but Loring's ring was not on her finger as she rose in confusion to greet him. ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... was taken out of the box. But Shahtah, the King, could not possibly do without breathing longer; he grew very red, and by the time the coat was fairly on was so exhausted, and so relieved at being through with the exertion, that he drew a long breath and sighed heavily, which expanded his portly frame until the coat burst in twenty rents. "How vexatious!" thought Kaddel, "and my grandmother who is blind, is the oldest woman! If now, the King were only as thin as I am," (for he was very thin,) ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... advanced dubiously towards the house. The mastiff growled at the sight of the suspicious-looking intruder, but was immediately silenced by his master, who, taking his pipe from his mouth, awaited with inquiring aspect the address of this equivocal personage. The stranger eyed old Jack for a moment, so portly in his dimensions, and decked out in gorgeous apparel; then cast a glance upon his own threadbare and starveling condition, and the scanty bundle which he held in his hand; then giving his shrunk ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... 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 ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... moderate enthusiasm, looking into Barney's face with great interest. The lobbyist was large and portly and smiling. His moustache drooped over his mouth, and his chin had a jolly-looking hollow in it. His hazel eyes, once frank and honest, were a little ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... "instead of starving yourself to death you need to lie awake at night with lovers' troubles. Why, the summer I courted Matilda I could have wrapped my belt around me twice. I have never been portly since. It's loving you need, good, hard, miserable loving. Didn't you ever hear of a 'lean and hungry lover'? Your conduct is positively—have another muffin and this little slice of upper joint—I say positively, unwomanly ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... had been quite ready to "chaff" Dick Lee, and he would not have hesitated about trying a like experiment upon Mr. Dabney Kinzer; but he knew enough to speak respectfully to the portly and business-like lady ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... the bolt and got out on deck. From the appearance of the sky I judged that it was only half an hour since I had found myself in the corridor. It was light enough to make out things fairly well, and now I could discern on the bridge the portly form of Holgate struck with this light. The figure of a man was visible a little in front of me by the chart-house. I heard Holgate's voice raised wheezily in orders, and the replies of the men came back to me inarticulately. As I crouched under the shelter of ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... White House, when the American public was at liberty to file past their President and shake his hand in their might as free men and free women. Miss Willis had not been able to obtain a location near enough to the inauguration proceedings to distinguish more than the portly figure of a man, or to hear anything except the roar of the multitude. But now she was to have the chance to meet Jimmy face to face and overwhelm him with her secret. Little by little the file of visitors advanced on its passage ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... it was you planted those trees there. It was a nice thought, and makes the transition from the bleak bog to the cultivated land more easy and graceful. Now I see the castle well. It's a fine portly mass against the morning sky, and I perceive you fly a ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... deep breath, we walked in together through the door Mr Rebble threw open, and closed behind us, when, as if through a mist, I saw the Doctor sitting at a writing-table, looking very stern and portly, the General, grey, fierce, and rather red-faced, seated a little way to the Doctor's right, with his malacca cane between his legs, and his hands, in their bright brown gloves, resting on the ivory ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... the door the form of the new sheriff, large, portly and pompous. Taylor was a mulatto who long had entertained political ambitions. The realization of one of his ambitions seemed for this present moment to give him no especial happiness. On his face stood beads of sudden perspiration. His office had never before seemed to him quite so serious as it ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... 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 form of the bar-keeper. ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... and private speculation, 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 by Lord Timothy Dexter, in Newburyport, remain ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... a man could run fast enough to cotch her," said Candace; and then her portly person shook with the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... of the portly lady made the situation clearer to Mrs. Mumford. Louise Derrick represented a certain stage of civilisation, a degree of conscious striving for better things; Mrs. Higgins was prosperous and self-satisfied vulgarity. Of a complexion much lighter than the ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... 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 always grumbled whenever she was. ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... 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
... decided to postpone the knocking on the cupboard door, which had been the signal arranged between himself and Sam, until a more suitable occasion. In the meantime he bounded silently out into the hall, and instantaneously tripped over the portly form of Smith, the bulldog, who, roused from a light sleep to the knowledge that something was going on, and being a dog who always liked to be in the centre of the maelstrom of events, had ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... easy-natured soldier smiled assent, Settled his portly person, smoothed his chin, And nodded ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... 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 ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... 'every soldier we passed seemed to me to smoke me for an impostor, knowing the coat wasn't made for me. Here, let's put one of these things underneath.' I put it on, buttoned the coat over it, inflated it, and the effect was a marvel;—it made a portly gentleman of me at once. I couldn't bear to take it off. 'Just the thing for diligence-travelling in the South of France,' said I; 'keep your neighbor's elbows from your ribs.' I never thought that I must buy a coat to match it. I was so tickled at my own fancy that buy it I would, in spite of Marston's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... 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 pale-brown rings, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... 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 to foregather with a ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... their womenfolk, so glib their French conversation as they quizzed their female companions. As for the other category, it comprised individuals who, stout, or of the same build as Chichikov (that is to say, neither very portly nor very lean), backed and sidled away from the ladies, and kept peering hither and thither to see whether the Governor's footmen had set out green tables for whist. Their features were full and plump, some of them had beards, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... 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 ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... 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
... village I felt more distinctly than ever before what a beautiful thing it is to have a home—a home with which one is identified by birth, memory, and love. The sun shone bright on the stately houses of the villagers, and their portly inmates in long coats and the gayly dressed women in short skirts gave me a much more friendly greeting than usual; on every face there seemed to be a wish for my happiness, which I invariably converted into thanks to you. Gray-haired ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... necessary and extract as much comfort as possible from the passing hour,—who carried on a small printing business which just made him a comfortable livelihood, in a narrow street within a stone's throw of the Museum. It was the bounden duty of Miss Emily Owen, seeing that the portly Judge, her father, and the pleasant matron, her mother, had formed the very highest opinion of one of these gentlemen, to fall in love with him as quickly as possible. Of course she had contracted for him a most unconquerable ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... decree adverse to them was granted. These are what is termed "dangerous States," in the parlance of the specialists; for there is always a chance of the disbanded mate feeling aggrieved and pugnacious, and of the cat coming with portly stare from the bag with a lively prospect of the perjured witnesses and the specialist having to "scoot" for parts unknown, or run the risk of dignifying the inside of the State prison. Many readers of this page will no doubt ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... school with my books and portfolio, watching my long shadow at my side, and as I was gliding upstairs to my room as usual, my godmother looked out of the parlour-door and called me back. Sitting with her, I found— which was very unusual indeed—a stranger. A portly, important- looking gentleman, dressed all in black, with a white cravat, large gold watch seals, a pair of gold eye-glasses, and a large seal-ring upon ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... just on the fringe of the city? where the cherry-trees are so bright in Springtime, where she could see the broad Sumida river washing her garden steps, the fussy little river boats puffing by, the portly junks, the crews of students training for their regattas, and, away on the opposite bank, the trees of Asakusa, the garish river restaurants so noisy at nightfall, the tall peaceful pagoda, the grey roofs and the red plinths ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... Sennacherib, who was watching the pair, drove out his clinched fist sideways with intent to nudge his brother Isaiah in the ribs, to call his attention to this incident as a confirmation of the history he had told the night before. He miscalculated his distance, and landed on Isaiah's portly waistcoat with such force that the milder brother grunted aloud, and, arising, demanded with indignation to know why he was thus assaulted. For a mere second Sennacherib was disconcerted, but recovering himself, he drew Isaiah on one side and whispered ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... me the favour to read this letter?" said the traveller, selecting a document from a portly pocket-book, ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... noon dinner-table Mr. Smith met Mr. Frank Blaisdell. He was a portly man with rather thick gray hair and "mutton-chop" gray whiskers. He ate very fast, and a great deal, yet he still found time to talk interestedly with his ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... is mutual is likewise proved by his subsequent appreciative dismissal of certain frivolous complaints against a majority of that majority for trifling misapprehensions of the Registry law. He is a portly, double-chinned man of about fifty, with a moral cough, eye-glasses making even his red nose seem ministerial, and little gold ballot-boxes, locomotives, and five-dollar pieces, hanging as "charms" from the chain of ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... with me the influence of the system of thought called Theosophy upon one's view of all the things which are included in the term Life, I have to preface my remarks by the confession that I have not extracted my ideas from portly volumes, or indeed, engaged in any great research; and I have further to ask you to believe that what you will hear is the most unbiased statement, as far as possible, on the subjects which will ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... of Messrs. Risk, Davies (younger and older), Kennedy, Creamer, and La Salle. Mr. Henry Risk was an English gentleman, of about fifty-five years of age, handsome, portly, and genial, a keen sportsman, and sure shot with the long, single, English ducking-gun, to which he stuck, despite of the jeers and remonstrances of the owners of ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... Susan said, laying an arm about the portly figure, and giving the lady a kiss. Mrs. Lancaster's anxious eye went ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... 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 ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... afterwards, 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the table, and gave every indication of being greatly annoyed. The provost meanwhile puffed and blowed, stretched out his big boots, and mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. He was a portly man, with a puffy face, whom ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE COUNTESS DE SAINT-GERAN—1639 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... their hotel? No? Walk! Impossible! Great people did not walk. It took much gentle persuasion to convey to the Mahmoudieh—the Governor of the Province—that the guests wished to take exercise, now that the cool of the evening was come. His Excellency was a gentleman of portly proportions, who, at some other period, may have walked. Despite his dimensions, he was agile and graceful in his sweeping salaams; when he spoke he emphasized every word with an appropriate sweep of the arm, and his eyebrows arched and ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... Mr. Aaron Whitcomb and Mr. Silas White were stalking majestically about the premises, with note-books and pens. Aaron Whitcomb was a grave, portly old man, with a large head of white hair. Silas White was little and wiry and fussy. He monopolized the greater part of the business, although he was not half as well fitted ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... in this attitude of humility, enters behind him a portly gentleman, with a little girl of four years old in his hand. The gentleman burst into a great laugh at the lady and her adorer, with his little queer figure, his sallow face, and long black hair. The lady blushed, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... no means strict with his flock. He was a tall man, inclined to be portly, a good shot and an ardent fisherman; and although he did not hunt, he was frequently seen on his brown cob at the meet, whenever it took place within a reasonable distance of Sidmouth; and without exactly following the hounds, his knowledge of the country often enabled ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... for a song, that we began to fancy ourselves within the walls of some hitherto unknown college, where the "levelling system" had mixed up fellows and under-graduates in one common supper-party, and the portly principal himself rejoiced in the office of "arbiter bibendi." Shall I confess it? I forgot even Clara in the uproarious mirth that followed. Two of the young Phillipses were admirable singers, and drew forth the hearty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... excommunicate, excrescence, excursion, exhale, exit, expel, expunge, expense, extirpate, extract; in no instance does ex fellow its connubial mate—it invariably precedes. The ports, on the other hand, are the peers of anybody. Some of them choose to remain single: port, porch, portal, portly, porter, portage. Here and there one marries into another family: portfolio, portmanteau, portable, port arms. More often, however, they are wooed than themselves do the pleading: comport, purport, report, disport, transport, passport, deportment, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Jim's body lay. It had not been moved before the coroner's inquest. The room was dark and several people were gathered around the inquest table. All eyes were turned on me as I entered the room. A portly man detached himself from the ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... a presentation to the bishop, a fat and portly prelate, with good manners, and well besuiting his priestly garments. I amused myself, while we waited for the carriages, by looking over a pamphlet which lay on the table, containing the ceremonial of the veil-taking. When we rose to go, all the ladies of the highest ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... marriage he invited me to meet F. Pollock and his wife at the Rectory. There we spent two easy days, and I heard no more of Merivale till three weeks ago when he asked me to meet Thompson just before Christmas. . . . Have you seen Merivale's History of Rome, beginning with the Empire? Two portly volumes are out, and are approved of by Scholars, I believe. I have not read them, not having money to buy, nor any ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... a portly man, who held his head back so that his face seemed all jowl and mouth and sandy chin-whisker. He smiled broadly upon them with half-closed eyes, ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... The portly man of genial aspect sitting in the corner of the bow window of the Maiden Head Inn at the High Street end of Dyott Street in the very heart of St. Giles, clapped his sleeping friend on the shoulder and shook him. The sleeper, a young man whose finely drawn features were clouded ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... blessed Christmas Eve; the light is failing fast; when down the High Street comes Mark's portly bulk. The next minute he has entered the old doctor's house, and is full of the afternoon's run, for ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... cry of astonishment and indignation Fearless Frank leaped forward to sever her bonds, when like so many grim phantoms there filed out of the chaparral, and circled around him, a score of hideously painted savages. One glance at the portly leader satisfied Frank as to his identity. It ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... somewhat thin, as will be seen in any of the numerous divinity students to be met with in Mecklenburg; when they have been settled in a good living for a few years, they begin to fill out like ordinary mortals. Braesig remembered this, and did not despair of seeing Godfrey a portly parson one of these days, though how it was to come about was rather a puzzle to him. Such was Godfrey Baldrian in appearance; but his portrait would not be complete if I did not add that he had the faintest possible tinge of Phariseeism in his expression. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... bell rang, and soon Mrs. Lockton walked upstairs, leading with her a quite insignificant, ordinary-looking, middle-aged, rather portly man with shiny black hair, bald on the top of his head, and ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... detectives to remark that he is seldom subjected to such disappointment. Whatever other foolishness they may commit, these adroit operators never kill the goose that lays their golden eggs. Beside this animated monument of distrust is a portly gentleman, his bearing in every way suggestive of plethoric pockets. Paper and pencil in hand, he is nervously figuring. He makes no secret of his figures because of his absorption, and a glance shows that he is correcting ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... together. Old Mr. Bazalguet, the Chairman, leaned far back in his chair and gazed at the ceiling, while two younger justices whispered to each other across his portly person, peering sideways at Ingram, who showed them his smooth head and folded arms. Colonel Vero, the fourth of the tribunal, was drawing angels on his blotting paper. Then they settled themselves, one of them with a shrug, and Sergeant Weeks ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... 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 ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... far as the window and then came swelling back with the mincing gait and circumspect air of a portly hen that fears to dirty her claws. As to Muffat, he followed her movements with eyes still wet with tears. He was stupefied by this sudden transition from anguish to comedy. She walked about for a moment or two in order the more thoroughly to show off her paces, and ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... Denver women in particular as typical of the nethermost depths to which the voting female may descend, Carroll Renner wrote a few lines on a bit of paper, and gave it to one of the ushers, and a few minutes later she had the satisfaction of watching the portly Mrs. Briglow-Jorliss read it. When Mr. Rice had concluded his diatribe, the lady stated in dulcet tones that Mr. Frank Earl was said to be in the audience, and as he lived in Denver, and was known to have strong views ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... clamours outside the heavy door, while the city urchins fight for the privilege of holding the mules of wealthy Moors, who are arriving in large numbers in response to the report that the household of a great wazeer, recently disgraced, will be offered for sale. One sees portly men of the city wearing the blue cloth selhams that bespeak wealth, country Moors who boast less costly garments, but ride mules of easy pace and heavy price, and one or two high officials of the Dar el Makhzan. All classes of the wealthy are arriving rapidly, for the sale will open in a quarter ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... 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 sister ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... himself was 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, ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... hard, and the Courtiers had their hands squeezed into great fur Muffs. I saw the King come down the Marble Staircase; a fair portly Gentleman, with a Greatcoat, lined with fur, over his ordinary vestments—then a novelty among the French, and called a ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... to believe it, but I'm afraid to," another man for whom Benson had no name-association said. He was portly, gray-haired, arrogant-faced; he wore a short black jacket with a jewelled zipper-pull, and ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... the Wolverene as time went on, and Father Beaver became quite gay. His coat filled out, and grew more glossy than ever; he would be "a portly old gentleman" before long, Mother Beaver told him; and at this he began to talk of tree-felling, for he did not like the idea of losing ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... he stood upright, with his head flung back, and his portly chest thrown out, you would have seen that Gabriel's lower man was clothed in military gear. Glancing at the wall beyond, there might have been espied, hanging on their several pegs, a cap and feather, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... 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, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... 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' ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... Thomas!" quoth he to the portly and somnolent landlord who responded to the summons. "Chaise will be ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... in loud and southward Gaelic or the lowlands of Air. The world was no longer dreaming but stark awake, all but the sea and the lapsing bays and the brown floating hills. Town Inneraora bustled to its marge. Here was merchandise, here the pack and the bale; snuffy men in perukes, knee-breeched and portly, came and piped in high English, managing the ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... a portly man in his fifties, burst out of his stateroom, still trying to shake the sleep ...
— Decision • Frank M. Robinson
... 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 ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... merchant ship or carrack of burden, principally of the Levant; the name is by some derived from Ragusa, but by others with more probability from the Argo. Shakspeare mentions "argosies with portly sail." Those of the Frescobaldi were the richest and most adventurous ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... curling, dark, 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 ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... machines I ever saw—a sort of litter; suppose a box open in front and the sides, with a low seat inside, and the lid shut down. Even Jerry and I, though not very big, had great difficulty in coiling ourselves away in ours; and how our portly old friend contrived it, was indeed a puzzle. We had to sit cross-legged, with our arms folded and our backs bent double, and were borne jogging along by two native porters, our heads every now and then bumping up ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... he view them all—from the ornately garbed young man who came among us purveying windmills to the portly, broadclothed, gray-whiskered and forbiddingly respectable colporteur of the American Bible Society. Some day would his keen gray eye penetrate the cunning disguise; some day would he step quietly up to his man and say in low but deadly tones: "Come with me, now. Make no trouble or it will ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... of the setting sun lit up her features, distorted by grief. Behind Charlotte there stood a lady of portly build, with great warts on her hands; yet her face was thin, and her countenance as motionless as that of the dead. She resembled a tree exuberant in ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... in a remarkably short time, or so it seemed to the brother and sister, who were conversing in whispers as they strove to restore the unconscious man to consciousness, there was a ring at the bell, and the constable had returned with a grave, portly-looking surgeon and a sergeant ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... 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
... change of any importance took place. Dundas continued to be a portly pluralist, utterly unable to overtake the work of three important offices, with the conduct of the war often superadded; and Chatham remained at the Admiralty until the close of 1794, to the annoyance of ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... who carried the plate was slowly making his way towards the pew in which she sat, and with her gaze fixed on him, she began fumbling with the clasp of her purse, under cover of her muff. She had never seen such a rubicund portly gentleman, with two double chins and expansive bald spot on his crown. She held the coin between her fingers awaiting his slow approach. Just as he reached the end of their pew where Phil was sitting, she sneezed. Not a loud ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... was a portly woman, inclined to think much of her dinner and her clothes, both of which were always rich and costly. She was not herself a notably intelligent woman; she greatly admired intelligence or whatever looked to her like intelligence ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Were you never in the larder, where cheeses lie on the shelves, and hams hang from above; where one dances about on tallow-candles; that place where one enters lean, and comes out again fat and portly?" ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... morning service has concluded, and the streets are again crowded with people. Long rows of cleanly-dressed charity children, preceded by a portly beadle and a withered schoolmaster, are returning to their welcome dinner; and it is evident, from the number of men with beer-trays who are running from house to house, that no inconsiderable portion of the population are ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... that I would have audience of him on some privy business." So the servant went in and told his master, who bade admit the visitor. When he entered, the Emir saw him to be a man of handsome semblance and portly presence; so he received him with honour and high distinction, seating him beside himself, and said to him, "What is thy wish?" Replied the stranger, "I am a highwayman and am minded to repent at thy hands and turn to Almighty ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... quarter, then, that we heard of Mrs. Johnson; and it was from a colored boarding-house there that she came out to Charlesbridge to look at us, bringing her daughter of twelve years with her. She was a matron of mature age and portly figure, with a complexion like coffee soothed with the richest cream; and her manners were so full of a certain tranquillity and grace, that she charmed away all out will to ask for references. It was only her barbaric laughter and her lawless eye that betrayed ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... in June, after the Chota Bursat— Lowered his portly person—made him yearn to depart. He didn't call me a "Brahmin," or "bloated," or "overpaid," But seemed to think it a wonder ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... a man as dusky as a Spaniard, Sunburnt with travel, yet a portly figure; Though coloured, as it were, within a tanyard, He was a person both of sense and vigour— A better seaman never yet did man yard; And she, although her manners showed no rigour, Was deemed a woman of the strictest principle, So much as ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... Kubomachi was his next goal. At this period it really was open ground. With a sigh of relief Densuke let the bundle slip from his now weary shoulders. Alive he would have laughed at the idea of carrying the portly Jusuke. Yet here the usurer bestrode him, far heavier weight than on other unfortunate clients. "Let's have a look at him; address him face to face." His hand was on the knot, when a woman's voice spoke ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... cartoonist's conventional conception of the modern Captain of Industry. His silk hat is on the back of his head as if he had just come from his office as fast as his forty-horse-power automobile could carry him. His portly form shows evidences of intense excitement. He is holding his hand aloft to stay the proceedings, while from his lips comes the stage whisper: "Gentlemen, stop! You will hurt business!" What would ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... were abruptly dispelled by a gentle knock at the door; and her "Come in," was answered by a tall, portly, handsome old lady, who sailed into the room in all the conscious dignity of black ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... beginning it, both of them had darkened their faces several shades, they felt confident that no one at the fort was likely to recognise them. When Surajah had put on the padded undergarment, and converted himself into a portly-looking old man, and Dick the great horn spectacles, they indulged in a burst of laughter at their changed appearance, while Ibrahim ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... 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. ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... matter?' asked Philammon of a quiet portly citizen, who stood looking up, with a most perplexed visage, at the windows of ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... by walking through a Fono (council), my mother actually taking up a position between Mataafa and Popo! It was about five when we started - turtle, pigs, taro, etc., my mother, Belle, myself, Tauilo, a portly friend of hers with the voice of an angel, and a pronunciation so delicate and true that you could follow Samoan as she sang, and the two tired boys Frank and Jimmie, with the two bad oars and the two slippery rowlocks to ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... time arrived for the commencement of the fair, which was within three months of the period which my beloved and myself had fixed upon for the celebration of our nuptials. To the fair I went, a couple of trusty men following me with the horses. I soon found a purchaser for the animals, a portly, plausible person, of about forty, dressed in a blue riding coat, brown top boots, and leather breeches. There was a strange-looking urchin with him, attired in nearly similar fashion, with a beam in one of his eyes, who ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... half afraid of wrong, Shall walk our streets, and mark the passing throng; The brawny oaf in mould herculean cast, The pigmy statesman trembling in his blast, The cumb'rous citizen of portly paunch, Unwont to soar beyond the smoaking haunch; The meagre bard behind the moving tun, His shadow seeming lengthen'd by the sun; Who forms scarce visible shall thus descry, Like flitting clouds athwart the mental sky; From giant bodies then bare gleams of mind, Like mountain ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... said Young R., glancing up at him, and beneath the quizzical look in those sleepy grey eyes, Mr. Brimberly's whiskers wilted slightly. "You're getting a trifle too—er—portly to hop round on your knees, aren't you, Brimberly? Pray sit down and ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... approaching wheel became more audible; it drew near, nearer; but lost the delicacy that distance lent it. Alas! it did not propel the car of a fairy, or the chariot of a heroine, but a cart, whose taxed springs bowed beneath the portly form of an honest yeoman who gave Captain Armine a cheerful good-morrow as he jogged by, and flanked his jolly whip with unmerciful dexterity. The loudness of the unexpected salute, the crack of the echoing thong, shook the fine nerves of a fanciful lover, and ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... portly gentleman, lifting his hat to a gentle, dignified little lady, remarks, "Beshrew me, but I do love thee still. Isn't it hot this morning; take this chair." Or if a very slender pop-eyed young comedian, while wiping his brow, says, "Now could I drink hot blood and hold it not a sin," ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... spring, five horsemen, emerging from a belt of woodland, galloped to the slope that led to the summit of this plateau. Drawing rein, they began slowly to ascend. Two of the cavaliers were young, tall, and strong;—two were portly and old, though still hearty and vigorous; one, who led them, on a coal-black steed, was a magnificent specimen of the backwoodsman, and one, who brought up the rear, was a thin little man, who made up for what he wanted in size by the energy and vigour of his action, as, with ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... beardless like a woman, was of a far finer nature. His religion was of the affections and the sentiments; and his imagination, warmed with the ardor of his faith, shaped the ideal forms of his worship into visible realities. Brbeuf sat conspicuous among his brethren, portly and tall, his short moustache and beard grizzled with time,—for he was fifty-six years old. If he seemed impassive, it was because one overmastering principle had merged and absorbed all the impulses of his nature and ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... misnamed a diligence, to escape from the stifling atmosphere of the rotonde. Our fellow-travellers consisted of a couple of greasy, black-haired, sallow-faced cures, two farmers' wives with a puking child each, our own portly self, and the sixth passenger. Now, this sixth individual, who was in reality the eighth Christian immured in this quasi Black-hole, was one of those nondescript Parisian existences, to define whom ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... Anglaise had been made, and the honours performed by profound salutations to the distinguished company and to the respective partners, the executants retired from the floor and were immediately set upon by a mob of congratulating friends. Among them, the portly form of Carleton, with his white shaven face, and large pleasant eyes, was prominent. He addressed his felicitations to several of the dancers, and thanked them for the splendid termination which they had given to ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... haunch surpasses all the rest;" Whose mouth hath ne'er within him burn'd, Whene'er his footsteps he hath turn'd From home, to Guildhall's civic feast? If such there breathe, go mark him well— For him no portly paunch can swell; Large though his shop, his trade the same, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim, Despite his shop, his trade, his cash, The wretch who knows not ven'son hash, Living, shall forfeit civic fame, And dying, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... view of fine scenery by way of background; and may all speak well of you—and me too for that matter—and generally all things be ordered unto you totally regardless of expense and with a view to nothing in the world but enjoyment, edification, and a portly and honoured age.—Your ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... owners of 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 portly but just ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... rich furs, strong-minded ladies bent on a mission, portly gentlemen on their way to their counting rooms, and troops of bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked school-girls, passed her on her way. Two little pinched, hollow-eyed children came out of a red brick building, which bore in large letters over the spacious doorway, "The Orphan's Home," and walked ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... was thoroughly aroused, and I endeavoured to awaken a similar feeling in my friend by hinting that we had at hand a promising field for discoveries which might immortalise the fortunate explorers; but my efforts were in vain. The old gentleman was a portly, indolent man, of phlegmatic temperament, who thought more of comfort than of immortality in the terrestrial sense of the term. To my proposal that we should start at once on an exploring expedition, he replied calmly that the distance was considerable, that ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace |
