"Portly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... resembled Mr Brandon of Midbranch. The clothes and the hat were the same that that gentleman wore, and the same heavy gold chain with dangling seal-rings hung across his ample waistcoat; but there was a general air of haggardness and stoop about him which did not in the least suggest the upright and portly gentleman who had written his name in the hotel ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... He was a portly man, with a place in the country, and a house in town; not rich for his position, but well off; a magistrate, and much respected; well educated in the ideas of the ancients, with whom his own ideas on many subjects stopped short, and hardly ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... the dark. He 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 waddled out ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... due time. He was an elderly portly man, well shaven and smooth-faced, intensely respectable, having been brought up to inherit an old hereditary business as bookseller, stationer, and publisher of a weekly local paper, long before Bexley had broken out into ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Bedford Row and the squares of Gray's Inn who were not known to me by sight or concerning whom I had not imagined (or discerned) circumstances invisible to their friends or themselves to account for their acts or appearances. Among these innumerable personages—portly solicitors, dashing clerks, scriveners, racing tipsters, match-sellers, postmen, young ladies of business, young ladies of pleasure, clients descending out of broughams, clients keeping rendezvous in public-houses, and what not—Quidnunc's may well have been one; but I ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... with his back to the fire the cold pinched him on the other side. His cowl had half-fallen back, and made a strange excrescence on either side of his bull-neck. So he straddled, grumbling, and cut the room in half with the shadow of his portly frame. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with indignation at this unprovoked assault, and she wished for the power of ten men, that she might punish the ill-natured fellow as he deserved. But it was all for the best, for, in pushing her out of the shop, the clerk threw her against a portly gentleman on the street, whose soft, yielding form alone saved her from being tumbled into the gutter. He showed no disposition to resent the assault upon his obesity, and kindly ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... pressing we could not choose but do so. This is a universal custom with the country innkeepers. In a little village which we passed toward evening there was a tavern with the sign "The Mother of Soldiers." A portly woman whose face beamed with kindness and cheerfulness stood in the door and invited us to stop there for the night. "No, mother," I answered; "we must go much farther to-day." "Go, then," said she, "with good luck, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... had so burdened themselves, that they needed assistance to transport all these gifts to Captain Yorke's house; and they could not look for any great amount of this from mammy, who had all she could do to convey her own portly person, and the enormous umbrella without which she never stirred, as a possibly needed protection against sun or rain, as the case might be. So they begged that Bill and Jim might act as carriers, coaxing Thomas to spare ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... a man could run fast enough to cotch her," said Candace; and then her portly person shook with the impulse of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... his despairing sight, fair and fresh as a spring flower, with beautiful golden hair and violet eyes; she came out from that fatal portal a woman of forty-five, stout, spectacled, with faded, thin hair beneath her nun's cowl, to meet a portly gray-haired man of fifty, in whom not even love's eye could detect the faintest vestige of the slender bright-eyed lover of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... original actors in the plays of Shakespeare, and a principal performer in some of those of Jonson; but it does not now appear what were the characters which he personated. They were probably the most dignified and majestic, for to these the portly and graceful figure of his person was well adapted. At length he became master of a company of players, and the proprietor of a playhouse called the Fortune, which he erected at his own expense, near Whitecross-street; and he ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... "Nay," said the portly wife of a merchant, "begging your pardon, this may be a fat instead of a lean sorrow. Leaves the poor gentleman heirs, ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... down the steps, a gentleman ascended them, and made his entrance into the shop. It was the portly, and, had it possessed the advantage of a little more height, would have been the stately figure of a man, considerably in the decline of life, dressed in a black suit of some thin stuff, resembling broadcloth as closely ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... 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 toward the ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... 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, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... glared at him and slunk out of the store. Hiram turned his back on the whole crowd and waited at the end of the counter for Mr. Schell. The storekeeper was a tall, portly man, with a gray mustache and side-whiskers, ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... portly gentleman in a suit of black, with strings at his knees, and stockings below them. He had a bald head, highly polished, a deep voice, and a chin so very double that it was a wonder how he ever managed ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the street with hungry alacrity. The poem-maker was tall and loose-jointed, and the breadth of his shoulders and long muscular limbs decidedly suggested success at the anvil or field furrow. He made a jocular pass at placing his arm around the uncompromising waist-line of his portly wife, and when warded off by an only half-impatient shove he contented himself by winding one of her white apron strings around one of his long fingers as they leaned together over the gate for further parley with the ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... means of a servant (well paid for the purpose) to mademoiselle's room. Again—this time for an endless amount of trouble and expense—Paul was rewarded. When next he met mademoiselle, and an opportune moment arrived, she looked at him, and as her lovely eyes scanned his manly, if somewhat portly figure, she smiled—smiled a smile of satisfaction which meant much. Paul Nicholas was in ecstasies. He hardly knew how to contain himself; he sighed, radiated, and wriggled about to such an extent that the attention of every one in the place was directed to him; whereupon ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... Savings Bank after all; I doubt if he would be such an admirable son as we are led to expect; and as for his conduct in love, I believe firmly he would out-Herod Herod, and put the whole of his new compeers to the blush. Prudence is a wooden juggernaut, before whom Benjamin Franklin walks with the portly air of a high priest, and after whom dances many a successful merchant in the character of Atys. But it is not a deity to cultivate in youth. If a man lives to any considerable age, it cannot be denied that he laments his imprudences, ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... value of their gifts, by keeping us wearily waiting before we got them. A barber, whom we found at his block busily weaving a wig, and whose diminutive crib would not contain half our company, apologised because it was not in his power to do much for us, and then diffidently tendered a guinea. A portly dealer in feminine luxuries talked largely of the claims of our indigent brethren, and the sacred obligations of charity, and wound up his sonorous homily with the climax of half-a-crown. We found one burly gentleman, buried up to the elbows ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... Q.C.; next to him sits Assessor Dr. ATLAY, Bishop of HEREFORD, who looks anything but happy; his hair has the appearance of being impelled by a strong draught, and his hand is to his face, as if the draught had produced toothache. The portly Bishop of OXFORD is on his right, and like the other corner man, the Bishop of SALISBURY, he scribbles away at a great rate in a huge manuscript book, or roll of foolscap. On the left of the Archbishop sits the Bishop of LONDON, who ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... my going before. You know how kind they always are. And they made things as jolly for me as ever they could, right up to the moment I left. But I felt a brute all the time, as it was clear to me they were very unhappy, though they tried to hide it. Mole, I'm afraid they're in trouble. Little Portly is missing again; and you know what a lot his father thinks of him, though he ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... was big, immobile, surly. It lined the sidewalks in the vicinity of the station and stared with curious, half-closed eyes at the portly capitalist and his party, which, by the way, was rendered somewhat imposing in size by augmentation in the shape of lawyers from Paris and London, clerks and stenographers from the Paris office, and four plain clothes men who were to see to it that Midas wasn't blown to smithereens ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... spectacles, which entirely concealed the color and expression of his eyes. His clothes were of a most primitive cut, and had probably been black once, but were now rusty and white from long service. His form was portly, a little inclined to corpulency. His hands were most unprofessionally dirty; but this might have been occasioned by contact with the canoe in his passage. On one of his fingers glittered a diamond ring, which, considering the lack of ornaments in ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... if the value of a title lie in its application, Mr. Swinburne is right. It has little relevance to the verses in the volume. On the other hand, as a portly and attractive mouthful of syllables The Passionate Pilgrim can hardly be surpassed. If not "a perfect title," it is surely "a charming name." But Mr. Humphreys' contention that Jaggard "set up a good precedent" and produced a "forerunner" of English anthologies ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... meet no more, you and I. How strange it will seem. We had so much in common besides our portly dressmaker and our masseuse with her shiny, greasy hands! Well, anyhow, let us be thankful to the masseuse for our ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... noon as we was chinnin' here in the front office, in blows a portly, red faced, stary eyed old party who seems kind of dazed and uncertain as to where he's goin'. He looks first at Tutwater, and then ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... in this 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 our will to ask for references. It was only her barbaric laughter and lawless eye that betrayed ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... spent an afternoon on the lawn of Bangletop, the young ladies seemed deeply pained at the mere mention of their accomplishments in the line of griddles and batter; nor could Mrs. Terwilliger, after having tasted the joys of aristocratic life, bring herself to don the apron which so became her portly person in the early American days, and prepare for her lord and master one of those delicious platters of poached eggs and breakfast bacon, the mere memory of which made his mouth water. In short, palatial surroundings had too obviously destroyed ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... and not the radiant embodiment of good humour who sat beside me in the person of a French Courier—best of servants and most beaming of men! Truth to say, he looked a great deal more patriarchal than I, who, in the shadow of his portly presence, dwindled down to ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... in the great man's presence; he was sitting with a little circle round him, in the further drawing-room, and certainly I never saw a nobler specimen of humanity. I felt myself at once before a hero—not of war and bloodshed, but of peace and civilization; his portly and ample figure, fair hair and delicate complexion, and, above all, the benignant calm of his countenance, told of a character gentle and genial—at peace with himself and all the world; while the ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... smallest legs, in the way of advertisements, that any poor newspaper ever stood upon! And yet this attenuated journal had a plump and plethoric title,—a title that smacked of turtle and venison; an aldermanic, portly, grandiose, Falstaflian title: it was called The Capitalist. And all those fine, subtle paragraphs were larded out with recipes how to make money. There was an El Dorado in every sentence. To believe that paper, you would think no man had ever yet found a proper ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... going to my work, on the front steps, watching the baby playing on the sidewalk. This pleasantest half-hour of the day I divided between the little one and my pipe. One morning, as I sat there smoking and as the little one was toddling to and fro on the sidewalk, a portly, nice-looking old gentleman came down the street, and, as luck would have it, the baby got right in his path, and before I could get to her she tangled herself all up with the old gentleman's legs and cane. The old gentleman seemed very ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... there's Walton, in early editions, There's many a quarto uncommonly rare; There's quaint old Quevedo adream with his visions, There's Johnson the portly, and Burton the spare; There's Boston of Ettrick, who preached of the 'Crooks In the Lots' of us mortals, who bargain ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... about six feet in height; his person, which was originally slender, afterwards became portly. He was of a fair complexion, and his countenance generally wore a smile. His manners were pleasing, and he cherished a keen relish for congenial society. In 1815 he published a thin duodecimo volume of verses, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... so dead, Who never to himself hath said, "This 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
... grieved and shocked at his appearance. He seemed twenty years older. I scarcely recognized in the pale, thin, invalid, the portly country gentleman whom I ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... placed at the head of their army, was one of the usual army-destroyers whom the Carthaginians were in the habit of employing as generals; strutting about in his general's purple like a theatrical king, and pampering his portly person even in the camp, that vain and unwieldy man was little fitted to render help in an exigency which perhaps even the genius of Hamilcar and the arm of Hannibal could have no longer averted. Before the eyes of Scipio Aemilanus, who at that time a military ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... been that Aminadab married the portly Janet, we might have heard no more of the fortunes of this man. But how true Aminadab's quotation, that God's vengeance never sleeps! Where, in all the scathed corpses of heaven's lightning, was there ever one that told its tale like that of Fletcher of Balinsloe, Lindertes, and Logie? ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... A portly, well-clad countryman, with a shrewd but good-humored countenance, and a wife beside him round and rosy of face as he, came bustling out of the private door. "How far yet, Master John?" he asked as he buckled on his cloak. "Forty-two miles to Oxford, sir," replied the carrier. "We must ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... you wrong your judgment, to repute My Gratitude a fault; I have examin'd Your portly carriage, and will now confess It ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... on his heels; and the rank and file were naturally relieved by their departure. We were now among equals; the bottle passed, the conversation sped. I think I can still hear the Stennis brothers pour forth their copious tirades; Dijon, my portly French fellow-student, drop witticisms well-conditioned like himself; and another (who was weak in foreign languages) dash hotly into the current of talk with some "Je trove que pore oon sontimong de delicacy, Corot ...," or some ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... "Do you mean that portly gentleman, who is slightly bald, and with whom you went out for refreshments?" Mona inquired, lifting a frank, inquiring look to her companion, though her heart beat fast at this reference ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... exile of the heiress from her own home, were all discussed. After a reasonable time, Mark excused himself and went to Mr. Alford's, pondering much on the strange events that had perplexed the usually quiet village. He reached the house, after a brief walk, and was met by Aunt Mercy, the portly mistress, but with something less than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... household effects. Even fair ladies, too, came in their carriages, holding high their aristocratic skirts as they threaded their way through the rooms where piles of carpeting and furniture of various kinds lay awaiting the shrill voice and hammer of the auctioneer, a portly little man, who felt more for the family than his ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... 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 day, without ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... and his self-mortification, until I began to think that I should pass my time but so-so in his house, nor enjoy the delights the priest had just before promised me; but when I compared his healthy and rubicund face, his portly and well-fed body, to the regimen which he professed to keep, I consoled myself by the hope that he allowed great latitude in his interpretation of the law; and perhaps that I should find, like the house which he inhabited, which had its public and private apartments, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... men in yellow robes had almost come up to us. It was clear they were boiling over with indignation; but they still did everything decently and in order. One, who was dressed in finer vestments than the rest—a portly person, with the fat, greasy cheeks and drooping flesh of a celibate church dignitary, whom I therefore judged to be the abbot, or chief Lama of the monastery—gave orders to his subordinates in a language which we did not understand. His men obeyed him. In a second they had closed us ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... the doors of memory for Martin Garrity as, at the window, he stared after her with eyes that saw in the portly, middle-aged figure a picture of other days, when the world had centred about a fluttering honour flag, which flew above a tiny section house at a bit of a place called Glen Echo, when the rotund form of Jewel Garrity was slender and graceful, when Martin's freckled face was thinner ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... The door of the pesthouse had opened abruptly and a short, portly man roughly dressed, unshaved and florid of complexion, appeared on the threshold a moment, eyed the approaching girls indifferently, glanced searchingly toward town, and again vanished within, closing the door behind him. Gloriana's heart seemed to stop beating, then pounded so loudly that ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... to say) when Squire Hardy sallied forth, charged with a small bag of salt, for the purpose of looking after his farm generally, and particularly of salting his sheep. It was an interesting sight to see the old gentleman, with his dignified, portly figure, marching at the head of a long procession of improved breeds—the universally-received emblems of innocence and patience. Barring his modern costume, he might have suggested to the artist's mind a picture of one ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... was tossing on the ocean, There where his argosies with portly sail, Like signiors, and rich burghers of the flood. Or, as it were, the pageants of the sea, Did overpower the petty traffickers, As they flew by them ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... 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 ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... fur trimmings on his Benedictine habit and a fat swan to roast. The friar, too, we see,—a mendicant, yet merry and full of dalliances, beloved by the common women, to whom he gave easy absolution; a jolly vagabond, who knew all the taverns, and who carried on his portly person pins and songs and relics to sell or to give away. And there was the merchant, with forked beard and Flemish beaver hat and neatly clasped boots, bragging of his gains and selling French crowns, but on the whole a worthy man. The Oxford clerk or scholar is one ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... height, not thin, but void of all muscular flesh,—bloated, puffed, unwholesome. He was dressed in a gray-flannel gown and short breeches, the stockings wrinkled and distained, the feet in slippers. The stomach was that of a portly man, the legs were those of a skeleton; the cheeks full and swollen, like a ploughboy's, but livid, bespeckled, of a dull lead-colour, like a patient in the dropsy. The head, covered in patches with thin, yellowish hair, gave some promise of intellect, for the forehead ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... up. It was one frequented by young artists, musicians, journalists and the clingers to the rather frayed fringes of the Arts. From time to time heads were turned to look at Romarin's portly and handsome figure, which the Press, the Regent Street photographic establishments, and the Academy Supplements had made well known. The plump young Frenchwoman within the glazed cash office near the door, at whom Marsden had several times glanced ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... some years ago—when heads now grey were brown, when eyes now dim were bright—the Strand was in its usual state of turmoil. Carriage followed carriage. Seedy clerks hustled past portly merchants—not their own masters, bien entendu, but those of other seedy clerks. Carriages and foot-passengers were alike going westward. All were leaving behind them the day and the busy city—some after a few hours devoted to the perusal of Times and Gazette; others fagged and weary ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... horn and the shouts of the children, he clambered forward to the platform, bobbing to right and left, and tweaking the ears of those he passed. Long, yellow rope hair hung down from under a round, scarlet cap, and a rope beard reached to his portly waist. Cotton snow and another kind that melted promptly in the warm room covered his shoulders and sleeves. In a gruff though merry voice that sounded above all the others, he sang out the names pinned to an ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... hat, of the early-Victorian shape known as "mushroom," tied with black ribbons beneath her portly chin; a loose brown holland coat; a very short tweed skirt, and Engadine "gouties." She had on some very old gauntlet gloves, and carried a wooden basket and a ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... that all day long plays but the one tune, hour after hour, was gathered together by noon, sleek and not yet heated, their trumpets shining in the sun, their fiddles glossy as their well-oiled hair, their big drum round as the portly figure of the bandmaster himself. Already, in many a bedchamber, young women had twirled this way and that before the mirror, studying the set of taffetas and tarletan, or young men had polished their high beavers anxiously against the sleeves of their brightest broadcloth frock coats. ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... such good authority, who the stout gentleman was; and will never forgive himself for not having made a more resolute effort to get a full sight of him. He has anxiously endeavored to call up a recollection of what he saw of that portly personage; and has ever since kept a curious eye on all gentlemen of more than ordinary dimensions, whom he has seen getting into stage coaches. All in vain! The features he had caught a glimpse of seem common to the whole race of ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... fellows grow! no longer a slim little fish, but quite a portly tadpole with rounded body and long tail, but still with no expression in his blunt-nosed face, and only two black-looking pits where the ...
— The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children • Jane Andrews
... maids flickered through the long passage-ways. The portly butler violently ejected from the dining-room had been seen passing swiftly through the hall, with the ungainly movement of a prehistoric animal startled from ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... "old fat man,..." that trunk of humours "... that old white-bearded Satan"; the Chief Justice gives us another of his "moist eye, white beard, increasing belly and double chin." Falstaff himself has another: "a goodly portly man, i' faith and a corpulent; of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble carriage." Such physical portraiture alone would convince me that there was a living model for Falstaff. But there are more obvious arguments: the other humorous characters of Shakespeare are infinitely ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... 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
... the wild, almost 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 ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... four larger lanterns, was proceeding leisurely to light the first of the smaller ones, draperies before a door at the east end of the room were parted and Agapoulos came in. Agapoulos was a short but portly Greek whom the careless observer might easily have mistaken for a Jew. He had much of the appearance of a bank manager, having the manners of one used to making himself agreeable, but also possessing the money-eye and that comprehensive glance which ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... set himself to keep watch at his study window from morning to night, the pair of Dutch mirrors fixed slantingly outside the window enabling him to see all the street life without being seen. After three days, his patience was rewarded by the reflected image of the portly pillar of the synagogue, and with him his little boy of six. He ran downstairs and into the street and caught up the boy ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... stared as usual with the crowd in the coach yard, and had watched three portly strangers already emerge from the open door to the steps, and was prepared for the accustomed sinking of my heart, what did that heart do but give a great bound so as almost to choke me! There he was in the doorway, the same old Phil, with the same ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... don' let dem git married. I 'splains it dis way. He am used for to father de chillun. Him picks de portly, and de healthy women dat am to rear de portly chillen. De overlooker, he am portly man. Dem dat him picks he overlooks, and not 'low dem to marry or to go round with other nigger men. If dey do, its whippin' sho.' De massa raises ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... 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 century—between the caverns of Thebais and majestic monasteries cherishing ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... however, Portsmouth carried on an extensive trade with the West Indies, threatening as a maritime port to eclipse both Boston and New York. At the windows of these musty counting-rooms which overlook the river near Spring Market used to stand portly merchants, in knee breeches and silver shoe-buckles and plum-colored coats with ruffles at the wrist, waiting for their ships to come up the Narrows; the cries of stevedores and the chants of sailors ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... These cursed executions! One cannot get them out of one's head. When the lads are swimming, and I chance to see a naked back, I think forthwith of the dozens I have seen beaten with rods. If I meet a portly gentleman, I fancy I already see him roasting at the stake. At night, in my dreams, I am tortured in every limb; one cannot have a single hour's enjoyment; all merriment and fun have long been forgotten. These terrible images seem burnt in ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... same when Ingild himself came out, ample robed and portly; for he gazed long at my helmed ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... the portly old gentleman (towards sixty now, huge of stature, with a shrieky voice, and speaks uncommonly fast) bowed himself in; and a Colloquy ensued, on Literature and so forth, of the kind we may conceive. Colloquy which had great fame in the world; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 all ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... matter of public curiosity 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, ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... was heard a hurrying tread; The great doors creaked. The reader fled. Forth came a crowd with muffled laughter, A waft of Bergamot, and after, His Chaplain smirking at his side, My Lord himself in all his pride— A portly shape in stars and lace, With wine-bag cheeks and ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... a portly man with a gruff voice, who had passed through the experiences of the forest fires that swept through Michigan, over twenty years ago. As he told his story, he made the scenes so real that Lloyd forgot where she was. ...
— The Story of the Red Cross as told to The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... malignant curiosity and her cancerous suspicions about all her friends, in spite, too, of her restless activities, Miss Mapp was not, as might have been expected, a lady of lean and emaciated appearance. She was tall and portly, with plump hands, a broad, benignant face and dimpled, well-nourished cheeks. An acute observer might have detected a danger warning in the sidelong glances of her rather bulgy eyes, and in a certain tightness at the corners of her expansive mouth, ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... 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,) "there would be no difficulty; ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... 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 ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... scarlet neck showing above his wilted collar, held a half-dozen listeners with his eyes, while he plied them with emphatic sentences in which the name of Crutchfield sounded like a refrain. Moving from group to group, portly, unctuous, insinuating, a man with an oily voice was doing battle ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... air heavy with the odors of the May. Haward and MacLean walked in silence, each as to the other, one as to the world at large. Now and again the Virginian must stop to bow profoundly to curtsying ladies, or to take snuff with some portly Councilor or less stately Burgess who, coming from the Capitol, chanced to overtake them. When he paused his storekeeper paused also, but, having no notice taken of him beyond a glance to discern his quality, needed neither a supple ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... prominence. He kept in the background, and did his spiriting gently. But Tom Wealdon, it was known—as things are known without evidence—was at the bottom of all the clever dodges, and long-headed manoeuvres. When, therefore, Mr. Larkin heard from the portly and veracious Mr. Larcom, who was on very happy relations with the proprietor of the Lodge, that Tom Wealdon had been twice quietly to Brandon to lunch, and had talked an hour alone with the captain in the library each time; and that they seemed very 'hernest like, and stopped of talking ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... at last," she said, with a big sigh of relief, "and here you are, Martin," as a portly looking butler came forward. "That's all right. Thanks ever so for the lift, Miss Carson. You'll excuse me now, won't you, though. I expect Geoffrey is tearing his hair in the billiard-room." And with that Maud vanished at top speed, and Margaret was left to Martin's guidance. ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... and laughed; a Dresden mirror was tripping about, crowned 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 waltzing; the teapots, with their broad round faces, were spinning their own lids like teetotums; ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... slightly formed, with rich brown hair and a dark clear complexion that might have been almost styled Spanish, but for the roses which bloomed on her cheeks. I could not help admiring the strong contrast between her and the fair face and portly figure of worthy Mrs Gaff, who listened to what she said with an air of ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... with which nature had stamped it, in a rare mixture with the sweetness of it; still nothing had he lost of that smooth plumpness of flesh, which, glowing with freshness, blooms florid to the eye, and delicious to the touch; then his shoulders were grown more square, his shape more formed, more portly, but still free and airy. In short, his figure showed riper, greater, and perfecter to the experienced eye, than in his tender youth; and now he was not much more than ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... I happened to be passing the same venerable Cathedral, and heard a clang of joyful bells, and beheld a bridal party coming down the steps towards a carriage and four horses, with a portly coachman and two postilions, that waited at the gate. The bridegroom's mien had a sort of careless and kindly English pride; the bride floated along in her white drapery, a creature so nice and delicate that it was a luxury to see her, and a pity that her silk ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... elderly, heavy breathing, 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 ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... prepared to take The figure of toupee and snake. Thus dress'd alike from top to toe, That which is which 'tis hard to know, When first in public we appear, I'll lead the van, keep you the rear: Be careful, as you walk behind; Use all the talents of your mind; Be studious well to imitate My portly motion, mien, and gait; Mark my address, and learn my style, When to look scornful, when to smile; Nor sputter out your oaths so fast, But keep your swearing to the last. Then at our leisure we'll be witty, And in the streets divert ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... the stable. They would take sugar out of my pockets like trained horses. But they proved to be decidedly too small; they would have answered as saddle horses for English children eight years of age, or as coach horses for Tom Thumb, but I was already in the enjoyment of that athletic and portly frame for which I am famed, and which has enabled me to bear up, without bending too much under the burden, under forty consecutive years of supplying of copy. The difference between the owner and the ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... protecting the wanderer and permitting him to see his master once more in health and safety. Ah, child, how anxious I have been! I expected to find you as wasted and thin as a convict from the quarries; I thought you would have been grieving and unhappy, and here you are as well, and handsome and portly as ever. If poor old Hib had been in your place he would have been ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... my deare harts desire, In finding fault with her too portly pride: The thing which I doo most in her admire, Is of the world unworthy most envide. For in those lofty lookes is close implide Scorn of base things, and sdeigne of foul dishonor; Thretning rash eies which gaze on her so wide, That loosely they ne dare to looke upon her. Such pride ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... was compelled to acknowledge that he made at least one mistake in "sizing up" men. One day a very dignified man called at the White House, and Lincoln's heart fell when his visitor approached. The latter was portly, his face was full of apparent anxiety, and Lincoln was willing to wager a year's salary that he represented some Society for the Easy and Speedy Repression ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... or I'm a Swede." Jimmy was glad to see the rosy smiling features and portly figure of former Police Commissioner of New York, McGuire. "What can there be in the meeting of a number of prosy old men, Jimmy, that brings a star reporter all the way up here? Or—oh, I see—you're a friend of Professor Brierly, of course, and Brierly's ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... family pew; his first visit to his uncle Greig, who thought himself so great a financier, and on whose purblind Edinburgh eyes John was to let in the dazzling daylight of the West; and the details in general of that unrivalled transformation scene, in which he was to display to all Edinburgh a portly and successful gentleman in the shoes of the ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that listens with a face of frozen stone In the City as the sun sinks low; There's a portly man of business with a balance of his own, There's a clerk and there's a butcher of a soft reposeful tone. And they're all of them returning to the heavens they have known: They are crammed and jammed in busses and—they're ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... to talk crops and stock and take a friendly glass with Tobias; and now and then a circus caravan with speckled ponies, or a menagerie with a soggy elephant, halts under the swinging sign, on which there is a dim mail-coach with four phantomish horses driven by a portly gentleman whose head has been washed off by the rain. Other customers there are none, except that one regular boarder whom I ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... front lawn in a moment and round the corner of the house, the Colonel leading, Silence and I at his heels, and the portly butler puffing some distance in the rear, getting more and more mixed in his addresses to God and the devil; and the moment we passed the stables and came into view of the laundry building, we saw a wicked-looking ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... your disposal, sir," Hanlon saluted crisply, and fell into step just behind the portly statesman as he left ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... mentioned only a few of the characters introduced in the Engraving. Johnson was at that time but in his fortieth year, and much less portly than afterwards. Cibber is the very picture of an old beau, with laced hat and flowing wig; half-a-dozen of his pleasantries were worth all that is heard from all the playwrights and actors of our day—on or off the stage: Garrick too, probably did not keep all his fine conceits within ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... will that her entire establishment should be kept up for the comfort and during the life of the three fat spaniels that had solaced her declining years. The heirs tried to break the will and failed; the delighted domestics, seeing before them a period of repose, proceeded (headed by the portly housekeeper) to consult a “vet” as to how the life of the precious legatees might be prolonged to the utmost. His advice was to stop all sweets and rich food and give each of the animals at least three hours of hard exercise a day. From that moment the lazy brutes led a dog’s life. Water and the ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory |
