"Corpulent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cunningly placed by Rudolph between the cacti and that apartment. At last, half-stooping, I found an aperture in the rich mass of blossoms. The Prince was talking to Rudolph. I had a good view of his person. He was dressed in an evening suit. He was a large man, somewhat corpulent; or, as Rudolph had said, bloated. He had a Hebraic cast of countenance; his face seemed to be all angles. The brow was square and prominent, projecting at the corners; the nose was quite high and aquiline; the hair had the look of being dyed; a long, thick black mustache covered his upper lip, ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... sat Schemetzkin, the Russian pianist, a short, corpulent man, with an apoplectic face and purplish skin, his thick, iron-gray hair tossed back from his forehead. Next to the German giantess sat the Italian tenor—the tiniest of men—pale, with soft, light hair, much in disorder, very red lips, ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... Micou was a corpulent man of about fifty years of age, with a low, cunning look, a pimply nose, and bloated cheeks; he wore an otter-skin cap, and was wrapped up in an old green garrick. Over the little iron stove near which he was warming himself, a board with numbers painted on it was nailed against the wall; ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... facts, chief among them the reiterated assurance that her own father had been, in the bosom of his family, of a delightfully sportive nature, but nothing like the Westfalls—dear no!—that he had a genteel figure, my dear, for all he had developed a somewhat corpulent tendency in later years; that the corn-beef which mother procured was highly superior to those portions of salted quadruped which Johnny obtained in the village—and facts ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... and friendly men. Zachariae was the most quiet; Pfeil, an elegant man, who had something almost diplomatic about him, yet without affectation, and with great good humor; Krebel, a genuine Falstaff, tall, corpulent, fair, with prominent, merry eyes, as bright as the sky, always happy and in good spirits. These persons all treated me in the most handsome manner, partly on Schlosser's account—partly, too, on account ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... receives him. She was about forty years of age, but you might give her sixty at a pinch. She had had beautiful teeth, but had got none left. All passes away! She had been rather good-looking, but was so no longer. All changes! Her figure was corpulent, and her hands were soiled. Nothing ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... had received intelligence that the garrison of Jacobus Van Curlet had been reduced nearly one-eighth by the death of two of his most corpulent soldiers, who had over-eaten themselves on fat salmon caught in the Varsche river. A secret expedition was immediately set on foot to surprise the fortress. The crafty enemy, knowing the habits of the garrison to sleep soundly after they had ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... well as his own; and as this highway robbery took place in the retirement of the shed, where Samantha Ann always swept them for their meals, no human being was any the wiser, and only the angels saw the white cat getting whiter and whiter and thinner and thinner, while every day Rags grew more corpulent and aldermanic in his figure. But as his stomach was more favorably located than an alderman's, he could still see the surrounding country, and he had the further advantage of possessing four legs (instead of two) ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... or de la Rochefoucauld, seem appropriate only to the warlike amazons of the Fronde, or corpulent kill-joys in powder and court trains of the Mme. Etiquette school; it comes as a shock, on being presented to a group of girlish figures in the latest cut of golfing skirts, who are chattering odds on the Grand Prix in ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... impressive utterance of this sentence, the contrary is immediately demonstrated by the appearance of a very corpulent, elderly lady, with three well-grown daughters, who come down looking about them most complacently, entirely regardless of the unchristian looks of the company. What a mercy it is that fat people are always ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... qualities of Charles James Fox, that he was thoroughly pains-taking in all that he did. When appointed Secretary of State, being piqued at some observation as to his bad writing, he actually took a writing-master, and wrote copies like a schoolboy until he had sufficiently improved himself. Though a corpulent man, he was wonderfully active at picking up cut tennis balls, and when asked how he contrived to do so, he playfully replied, "Because I am a very pains-taking man." The same accuracy in trifling matters was displayed by him in things of greater importance; and he acquired ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... coarse-featured, corpulent woman, younger and very much larger than Mr. Cave; she walked heavily, and her face was flushed. "That crystal is for sale," she said. "And five pounds is a good enough price for it. I can't think what you're about, Cave, not to ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... arrival at Benowm, and told me to wrap it close round me. We visited the tents of four different ladies, at every one of which I was presented with a bowl of milk and water. All these ladies were remarkably corpulent, which is considered here as the highest mark of beauty. They were very inquisitive, and examined my hair and skin with great attention, but affected to consider me as a sort of inferior being to themselves, and would knit their brows, and seem to shudder when they looked ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... wilder asparagus—the field asparagus which seems to have disappeared from England, but of which Herrick boasts in his manifestations of frugality—and strawberries much less than half-way from the small and darkling ones of the woods to the pale and corpulent of the gardens, and with nothing of the wild fragrance lost—these are all Italian things of savage savour and simplicity. The most cultivated of all countries, the Italy of tillage, is yet not a garden, but ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... shockingly corpulent," said Colonel Katy-did, not at all pleased to hear him praised, ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... is a corpulent, excitable man with one eye. The boys describe him as stumbling into the room mouthing some of those tempered expletives irritable schoolmasters accustom themselves to use—lest worse befall. "Wretched ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... whom I saw at my mother's in my infancy, and whom I remember by being terrified at her enormous figure, was as corpulent and ample as the Duchess was long and emaciated. Two fierce black eyes, large and rolling beneath two lofty arched eyebrows, two acres of cheeks spread with crimson, an ocean of neck that overflowed and was not distinguished from the lower part of her body, and no part restrained ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... been already remarked by writers,—though that will not prevent me from repeating it,—that, of all the four-footed friends of man, none, not even that corpulent chap, Elephant, has contributed more voluminously to the literature of anecdote than that first-rate fellow, Dog. Let me also take the liberty of recalling, in corroboration of others who have previously drawn attention to the same fact, that from the earliest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... he then gives the final and authoritative order to go to press, and towards two o'clock in the morning turns his steps homeward. M. Bertin, says our author with some malice, belongs to that class of corpulent men so liked by Caesar and Louis Phillippe. Personally, M. Bertin has no reverence for what is called nobility, either ancient or modern. He is of the school of Chaussee d'Antin, which would set the rich and intelligent middle classes in the places ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Phil, trying to straighten his bonnet; then, glancing around the room, "There isn't a piece of furniture here large enough to hide your corpulent form," he said. "There he comes! Now, I hope you're satisfied; you wouldn't ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... announced (September 18), and Huntly was accused of a desire to murder him and Lethington, while his son John was to seize the Queen. {221b} Mary was "utterly determined to bring him to utter confusion." Huntly was put to the horn on October 18; his sons took up arms. Huntly, old and corpulent, died during a defeat at Corrichie without stroke of sword; his mischievous son John was taken and executed, Mary being pleased with her success, and declaring that Huntly thought "to have married her where ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... punishment; and if Vanslyperken had told him to blow any man's brains out belonging to the vessel, Van Spitter would have immediately obeyed the order without the change of a muscle in his fat, florid countenance. The corporal was an enormous man, tall, and so corpulent, that he weighed nearly twenty stone. Jansen was the only one who could rival him; he was quite as tall as the corporal, and as powerful, but he had not the extra ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... portly man, i'faith, and a corpulent; of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble carriage; and, as I think, his age some fifty, or, by'r Lady, inclining to threescore; and now I remember me, his name is Falstaff: if that man should be lewdly given, he deceiveth me; for, Harry, I ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... A pause. One corpulent slow boy, with a wheezy manner of breathing, ventured the answer, Because he wouldn't paper a room at all, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... free, Spectacled the limpid eye, Little will be left of me, In the coming by-and-by! Fading is the taper waist - Shapeless grows the shapely limb, And although securely laced, Spreading is the figure trim! Stouter than I used to be, Still more corpulent grow I - There will be too much of me ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... What manner of man, and it like your Maiestie? Falst. A goodly portly man yfaith, and a corpulent, of a chearefull Looke, a pleasing Eye, and a most noble Carriage, and as I thinke, his age some fiftie, or (byrlady) inclining to threescore; and now I remember mee, his Name is Falstaffe: if that man should be lewdly giuen, hee deceiues mee; for Harry, I see Vertue in his Lookes. If then ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... thought Worthy to join the Blacks in their nocturnal adventures, or was, by my Hardihood and powers of Endurance—poor little mite that I was—adjudged to be Forest Free, I remained under the charge of Ciceley of the Cindery, and of the corpulent Tapstress whom the Blacks called Mother Drum. These two women were very fond of gossiping with me; and especially did Mother Drum love to converse with me upon her own Career, which had been of the most Chequered, not to say Amazing nature. I have already hinted that at one time this Remarkable ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... what she was when we went away. Then she could run about camp climb out and in the wagons, and move about so spry that she reminded one of a quail. Now she was strangely misshapen. Her limbs had lost all the flesh and seemed nothing but skin and bones, while her body had grown corpulent and distended, and her face had a starved pinched and suffering look, with no healthy ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... recollected that a river, not to be compared with the Thames even as to volume of water—viz., the Tiber—has contrived to make itself heard of in this world for twenty-five centuries to an extent not reached as yet by any river, however corpulent, of his own land. The glory of the Thames is measured by the destiny of the population to which it ministers, by the commerce which it supports, by the grandeur of the empire in which, though far from the largest, it is the most influential stream. Upon some such scale, and not by a transfer of ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... was about thirty-five years of age, with light grey eyes, fair hair and moustache, and his complexion was a whitey drab. He was tall—about five feet ten inches—and rather clumsily built; not corpulent, but fat—in good condition. He appeared to be very well fed and well cared for generally. His clothes were well made, of good quality and fitted him perfectly. He was dressed in a grey Norfolk suit, dark brown boots and knitted woollen stockings ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... loquacious talkative, garrulous wisdom, sapience bodily, corporeal name, appellation finger, digit show, ostentation nearness, propinquity wash, lave handwriting, chirography waves, undulations shady, umbrageous fat, corpulent muddy, turbid widow, relict horseback, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... this castle, where Lord Ogul resides. He bought me without knowing who I was. He is a voluptuary, ambitious of nothing but good living, and thinks that God sent him into the world for no other purpose than to sit at table. He is so extremely corpulent that he is always in danger of suffocation. His physician, who has but little credit with him when he has a good digestion, governs him with a despotic sway when he has ate too much. He has persuaded him that a basilisk stewed in rose water will effect a complete cure. ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... machinery an abundance of room, the steam man was exceedingly corpulent, swelling out to aldermanic proportions, which, after all, was little out of harmony with ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... beare vp the burthen that was laide vppon them. Their ornature and decking with woorkes, and deuises imitating the apparreling of princely bodies indewed as it were with an artificiall reason. For as to a large big and corpulent body strong legges, and broad feete, are necessarie to beare and carry the same: so in a modulate and well composed building, to sustaine great weights, Naues are appointed, and for beautie, columnes, Corinthies, and slender ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... sixty years of age, who had been addicted to an immoderate use of fermented liquors, and had been very corpulent, gradually lost his strength and flesh, had great difficulty of breathing, with legs somewhat swelled, and a very irregular pulse. He was very much distressed at first lying down, and at first rising from his bed, yet in a minute or two was easy in both those attitudes. He made straw-coloured ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... female misery and degradation, there was a belt of masculine stupidity and crime; men with corpulent bodies, bull necks, double chins, pile-driving heads; men of shrunken frames, cadaverous cheeks, deep-set and beady eyes—vermin-covered, disease-devoured, hope-deserted. They clung around him, these concentric circles of humanity, like rings around a luminous ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... first noticed it from the steamboat—"a narrow, lop-sided wooden jumble of corpulent windows heaped one upon another as you might heap as many toppling oranges, with a crazy wooden veranda impending over the water,"—a tavern of dropsical appearance, which had not a straight floor in ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... moment Mr. Weil called his companion's attention to a rather corpulent gentleman who had just entered the breakfast room and was stopping near the door to hold a brief conversation with some one he had ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... struck. We were deep in our straw and lights had been out for a long time. I couldn't sleep, and as I lay awake I could hear corpulent Z—— snoring in the corner. Outside a wind was whistling mournfully and sweeping through the joists of the roof where the red tiles had been shattered by shrapnel. There was something (p. 132) melancholy and superbly grand in the ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... bells, and bring with him the wallet. Guccio, though 'twas with difficulty that he tore himself away from the kitchen and Nuta, hied him up with the things required; and though, when he got up, he was winded, for he was corpulent with drinking nought but water, he did Fra Cipolla's bidding by going to the church door and ringing the bells amain. When all the people were gathered about the door, Fra Cipolla, all unwitting that aught of his was missing, began ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... be corpulent, rosy-cheeked, and cheerful. I am gaunt, pale, and morose now. I used to sleep sweetly; but now I toss about upon my bed, terrified by hideous visions, and feelings as of a clammy hand or wet cloth laid on my face. I was wont to walk about our streets ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... at Du Toit's Pan in the early days was "Old Moore." I forget what his profession was. Moore was quite sixty years of age, and was exceedingly corpulent; nevertheless, he was amorous to a degree. There was a remarkably pretty barmaid at Benning and Martin's bar, and with her Moore fell in love. This circumstance was a source of great amusement to the local gilded youth. A plot was concocted, ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... touched the electric buzzer on his desk and then watched the door. He was an unpleasant—looking man, strangely corpulent as to body, considering his face was cast in lean and narrow mould, the nose large, prominent and hooked, the lips full, fleshy, and of cherry—like redness, the eyes small, mean, close together and deep set. The over—corpulent body was attired lavishly. It was ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... and curses. Cartwright, whose curiosity was ungovernable, had been guilty of the folly and indecency of coming to Westminster in order to hear the decision. He was recognised by his sacerdotal garb and by his corpulent figure, and was hooted through the hall. "Take care," said one, "of the wolf in sheep's clothing." "Make room," cried another, "for the man with the Pope in ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... this garden set in the midst of the noisy European quarter of Constantinople. The music was vulgar; Greek waiters with dissipated faces ran to and fro carrying syrups and liqueurs; corpulent Turks sat heavily over glasses of lager beer; overdressed young men of enigmatic appearance, with oily thick hair, shifty eyes, and hands covered with cheap rings, swaggered about smoking cigarettes and talking ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... men, but for sure—enough suckers. Here in America if the average mortal aspires to fill a long-felt want with first-class fodder, he's got to chase the almighty dollar on week-days like a hungry coyote camping on the trail of a corpulent jack-rabbit, and spend Sunday figuring how to circumvent his fellow-citizen. Life with the American people is one continental hurry, and rush from the cradle to the grave. We're born in a hurry, live by electricity and die with scientific expedition. Half of us don't take time to become ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... a colonizationist, I insist upon being consistent: there must be no disagreement between my creed and practice. I must be able to give a reason why all our tall citizens should not conspire to remove their more diminutive brethren, and all the corpulent to remove the lean and lank, and all the strong to remove the weak, and all the educated to remove the ignorant, and all the rich to remove the poor, as readily as for the removal of those whose skin is 'not colored like my own;' for Nature has sinned as culpably in diversifying ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... by several guttural sounds from Ramm Rapelye, betokening that he was laboring with the unusual production of an idea. As he was too great a man to be slighted by a prudent publican, mine host respectfully paused until he should deliver himself. The corpulent frame of this mighty burgher now gave all the symptoms of a volcanic mountain on the point of an eruption. First there was a certain heaving of the abdomen, not unlike an earthquake; then was emitted a cloud of tobacco smoke from ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... called "The Field of the Cloth of Gold." Large, portly men with whiskers wore purple velvet opera-cloaks trimmed with fur, and Gainsborough hats with ostrich feathers worth four pounds apiece (sterling). These corpulent warriors, who at Calais shortly before had run till overtaken by nervous prostration and general debility, now wore more millinery and breastpins and slashed velvet and satin facings and tinsel than the most successful and highly painted and decorated ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... hunted the buffaloes; dressed well; were cleanly; rich in horses; bold, independent, and good warriors. The War-are-ree-kas lived chiefly by fishing, and were found on the banks of the rivers and lakes throughout the country. They were more corpulent, slovenly, and indolent than the Shirry-dikas, and more peaceful. The Banattees, as we have before mentioned, were the robbers of the mountains. They were a wild and contemptible race, and at enmity with every one. In summer they went about nearly naked. In winter they clothed themselves in ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... John Bull," she says, "have the same father, but not the same mother. John Bull is corpulent, with high-coloured cheeks, is self-assertive, and speaks in a loud voice; Brother Jonathan, who is much younger, is lank, tall, weak about the knees, not boastful, but vigorous and decided. John Bull is at least forty, while Jonathan ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... corpulent knight drew himself to his feet, and with one hand bearing affectionately but heavily on Droop's shoulder, he shuffled over to ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... an opportunity of learning, he set himself to read with such close application that, from being comparatively thin, the effect of having been fond of the chase, he became quite corpulent from want of exercise. Mr. Oswell gave him his first lesson in figures, and he acquired the alphabet on the first day of my residence at Chonuane. He was by no means an ordinary specimen of the people, for I never went into the town ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... was Ivan Ivanitch Bragin. At one time he had been very active, talkative, noisy, and given to falling in love, and had been famous for his extreme views and for the peculiar charm of his face, which fascinated men as well as women; now he was an old man, had grown corpulent, and was living out his days with neither views nor charm. He came the day after getting my letter, in the evening just as the samovar was brought into the dining-room and little Marya Gerasimovna ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... customer came in, and when he left at half-past twelve Abe escorted him to the store door and lingered there a few minutes to get a breath of fresh air. As he was about to reenter the store he discerned the corpulent figure of Frank Walsh making his way down the opposite sidewalk toward Wasserbauer's Cafe. With him were two other men, one of them about as big as Frank himself, the ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... Going into weight is going into degeneration. Women like to be plump for various reasons, some of which are not the most creditable to either men or women. Fat people are not good looking. There is not a statue in the world sculptured on corpulent lines that ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... had a suitor. Inwardly she resented him. At sixty Clint Darrow, a widower now and reverent in speech of the departed one whose extravagance he had deplored, came to live at the hotel in three-room grandeur, overlooking the lake. A ruddy, corpulent, paunchy little man, and rakish withal. The hotel widows made much of him. Hannah, holding herself aloof, was often surprised to find her girlhood flame hovering near now, speaking of loneliness, of trips abroad, of a string of pearls unused. There was something virgin ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... rascal in red scarf and green feathers—more needful that my heart should swell with loving admiration at some trait of gentle goodness in the faulty people who sit at the same hearth with me, or in the clergyman of my own parish, who is perhaps rather too corpulent and in other respects is not an Oberlin or a Tillotson, than at the deeds of heroes whom I shall never know except by hearsay, or at the sublimest abstract of all clerical graces that was ever conceived by ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... the young men, ten in number, outstripped that of old Adams, who was in his sixty-fifth year, and somewhat corpulent. He was dressed in a sailor's shirt and trousers, and a low-crowned hat, which he held in his hand until desired to put it on. He still retained his sailor's manners, doffing his hat and smoothing down his bald forehead whenever he was addressed by ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... high chat; and there was something particular and earnest in their manner, which made him uncomfortable then. And fat Captain Cluffe's gall rose and nearly choked him, and; he cursed Dangerfield in the bottom of his corpulent, greedy soul, and wondered what fiend had sent that scheming old land-agent three hundred miles out of his way, on purpose to interfere with his little interests, as if there were not plenty of—of—well!—rich old women—in London. And he bethought him of the price of the cockatoo and the probable ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... With corpulent intensity the Cherub melodramatically drew from his pocket the Telegraph clipping and tendered it to Langdon, watching the latter's face closely. "That's the pea, ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... Brummell himself, and his wardrobe was calculated to have cost L.100,000. But his royal highness had one obstacle to encounter which ultimately drove him from the field, and restricted all his future chances of distinction to wigs; he began to grow corpulent. A scarcely less formidable evil arose in his quarreling with Brummell. In the course of hostilities, the Prince pronounced the beau a tailor's block, fit for nothing but to hang clothes on; while the retaliation came in the shape of a caricature, in which a pair of leather ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... interest in listening to some of the speakers, and in looking at some of the members. Montaigne pointed out all of the notables. One of the speakers* was a short man, with a corpulent body and a large open face; but he was a born orator of a certain type. Rounded and polished, mellow and musical, his sentences rolled from his mouth in liquid cadence and perfect balance. Sir Hugh put ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... an ill-fitting suit, a straggling gray beard and a corpulent umbrella hopped from the conglomeration of cabs and street cars to the sidewalk at ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... Massachusetts: 'Because it is not the province, and does not belong to the power of any legislative assembly, in a republican government, to decide on the complexional affinity of those who choose to be united together in wedlock; and it may as rationally decree that corpulent and lean, tall and short, strong and weak persons shall not be married to each other as that there must be an agreement in the ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... wide, sharing, with Lindenwald, the honor of entertaining the nation's notables, many of them introduced by Van Buren. Such names as Henry Clay, Washington Irving, Thomas H. Benton, David Wilmot and Charles Sumner head the list. David Wilmot was a notably corpulent gentleman; his introduction by Van Buren to the lady of the house is said to have been put thus wise: "Mrs. Beekman, you have heard of the Wilmot Proviso—Here he is ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... the front office, where, seated at an old-fashioned desk, was a youth, tall, thin and pale, busily engaged engrossing some legal documents. A short, quick step was heard coming up the Court, the handle turned, the door opened, and a man about the middle height with a slight tendency to be corpulent, and about thirty-five years of age, entered. "Are those papers ready," enquired Mr. Coleman of the young clerk, who had ceased writing on the entrance of ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... the Saratoga hotels. A costly bottle of wine added its ruddy hue to his florid complexion. The waiters were obsequious, the smiling nods of recognition from other distinguished guests of the house were flattering, and as the different courses were brought on, the man became the picture of corpulent complacence. His aspect might have changed could he have looked upon the still form of the once frolicsome, beautiful girl, who had been slain because he had failed so criminally in fidelity to his oath of office. It would not ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... woman, and two children, were in the house when the alarm was given. Mrs. M'Niel's eldest daughter was at Argyle. The black woman seized the two children, fled through the back door into the kitchen, and down into the cellar. Jenny and Mrs. M'Niel followed; but the old woman was corpulent, and before they could descend, a powerful Indian seized Mrs. M'Niel by the hair and dragged her up. Another brought Jenny out of the cellar. But the black woman and the children remained undiscovered. The Indians started off with the ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... He had heard much of my friend Swainson, and greeted him as he deserves to be greeted; he was polite and kind to me, though my name had never made its way to his ears. I looked at him and here follows the result: Age about sixty-five; size corpulent, five feet five English measure; head large, face wrinkled and brownish; eyes grey, brilliant and sparkling; nose aquiline, large and red; mouth large with good lips; teeth few, blunted by age, excepting one on the lower jaw, measuring nearly three-quarters of an inch square." The ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... exercises are more beneficial to youth, to the middle-aged, to the robust in general, and particularly to the corpulent ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... waiting on the guests, and from time to time gave an order, with a most majestic air. Presiding over another buffet, on which were neatly arranged numerous wine-bottles of different forms and dimensions, was another elderly man, of short, corpulent figure, and with a jolly red face, who stepped about actively and lightly, despite his age and weight, dispensing the wine to the servants as it was needed. At first de Sigognac did not notice them, but chancing to glance ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... omnivorous being which can masticate, deglute, digest and apparently pass through the ordinary channel with pluterperfect imperturbability such multifarious aliments as cancrenous females emaciated by parturition, corpulent professional gentlemen, not to speak of jaundiced politicians and chlorotic nuns, might possibly find gastric relief in an innocent collation of staggering bob, reveals as nought else could and in a very unsavoury light the tendency ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... mirth to those who lived with me, and others who occasionally paid us visits. I persisted, and the next "masterpiece" was the figure of a soldier (afterwards Private Blobs, of "Fragments") sitting up a tree staring straight in front of him into the future, whilst a party of corpulent Boches are stalking towards him through the long grass and barbed wire. He knows there's something not quite nice going on, but doesn't like to look down. This was called "The Listening Post," and the sensation described was so familiar to most ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... The same corpulent official was seated behind the desk at the police station; but on this occasion he woke up promptly. "The chief had better handle this," he said, and went to ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... sent to say that he must be in readiness to ride out with him, as he intended to show him to some of his women. They together visited the tents of four different ladies, at every one of which he was presented with a bowl of milk and water. They were all remarkably corpulent, which in that country is the highest mark of beauty. They were also very inquisitive, examining minutely his hair and skin, though affecting to consider him as a sort of inferior being to themselves, and pretending to shudder when they looked at the whiteness of his skin. Notwithstanding ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... him a sword, inviting me to come and see the ceremony. I went back into what was the dining-room of the house; on the table lay a rose-wood box, containing a sword, sash, spurs, etc., and round about the table were grouped Mrs. Grant, Nelly, and one or two of the boys. I was introduced to a large, corpulent gentleman, as the mayor, and another citizen, who had come down from Galena to make this presentation of a sword to their fellow-townsman. I think that Rawlins, Bowers, Badeau, and one or more of General Grant's personal staff, were present. The mayor rose and in ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... horses and allow the passengers to dine. People in the county, wishing to take the early mail Portsmouth-ward, put up overnight at the old tavern, famous for its irreproachable larder and soft feather-beds. The tavern at that time was kept by Jonathan Bayley, who rivalled his wallet in growing corpulent, and in due time passed away. At his death the establishment, which included a farm, fell into the hands of a son-in-law. Now, though Bayley left his son-in-law a hotel—which sounds handsome—he left him no guests; for at about the period of the old ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... dress was that of a Cistercian Monk, but composed of materials much finer than those which the rule of that order admitted. His mantle and hood were of the best Flanders cloth, and fell in ample, and not ungraceful folds, around a handsome, though somewhat corpulent person. His countenance bore as little the marks of self-denial, as his habit indicated contempt of worldly splendour. His features might have been called good, had there not lurked under the pent-house of his eye, that sly ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... naked eye as a pair of particularly fat laundry drawers hung out to dry and ballooned in extension—if mayhap you've ever seen the sight of them in that state:—just held together by a narrow neck of thread or button, and stretching away like a corpulent frog in the act of swimming on the wind. His comparison touches the sentiment of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the turf-sided road, my chimney—a huge, corpulent old Harry VIII of a chimney—rises full in front of me and all my possessions. Standing well up a hillside, my chimney, like Lord Rosse's monster telescope, swung vertical to hit the meridian moon, is the first object to greet the approaching traveler's eye, nor ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... hot bustle, reviewing that house, once ours, to which he had but now succeeded; a corpulent, sanguine man of middle age, sensual, vulgar, humorous, and, if I judged rightly, not ill-disposed by nature. But the sparkle that came into his eye as he observed me enter warned me to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Lucius Cassius—were incapable men; Lentulus an ordinary aristocrat of big words and great pretensions, but slow in conception and irresolute in action; Autronius distinguished for nothing but his powerful screaming voice; while as to Lucius Cassius no one comprehended how a man so corpulent and so simple had fallen among the conspirators. But Catilina could not venture to place his abler partisans, such as the young senator Gaius Cethegus and the equites Lucius Statilius and Publius Gabinius Capito, at the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... United States Senate, and the closest approach anybody ever won to victory in battle over Stonewall Jackson; and engaging, despite his height of five feet and his weight of a hundred pounds, in personal encounters with Stuart, Lincoln's athletic law partner, and a corpulent attorney named Francis. ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... the first lieutenant, whom Nature had pleased to fashion in another mould. He was as tall as the captain was short—as thin as his superior was corpulent. His long, lanky legs were nearly up to the captain's shoulders; and he bowed down over the head of his superior, as if he were the crane to hoist up, and the captain the bale of goods to be hoisted. He carried his hands behind his back, with two fingers twisted together; and his chief difficulty ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... much displeased that an adherent of the exiled family should be forced into the service of his own. in consequence of this appointment a caricature was circulated, representing the ministers thrusting Sir John, who was extremely corpulent, down ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... distance, seeing the expense would be saved by not having our house full of company on Sunday, which was always the case, being so near town; besides the exercise would be beneficial, for I was growing corpulent with good living and idleness. Accordingly we removed to the distance of fifteen miles from town, into a better house, because there was a large garden adjoining it, and a field for the horse. It afforded abundance of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XIII, No. 370, Saturday, May 16, 1829. • Various
... by this quaint and unexpected declamation, Philip turned his quick glance at his neighbour. He saw a man of great bulk and immense physical power—broad-shouldered—deep-chested—not corpulent, but taking the same girth from bone and muscle that a corpulent man does from flesh. He wore a blue coat—frogged, braided, and buttoned to the throat. A broad-brimmed straw hat, set on one side, gave a jaunty appearance to a countenance which, notwithstanding its jovial complexion ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... new-comer with a restrained astonishment, not unlike that he would have shown if some huge but obviously harmless sea-beast had crawled into his room. The new-comer regarded the doctor with that beaming but breathless geniality which characterizes a corpulent charwoman who has just managed to stuff herself into an omnibus. It is a rich confusion of social self-congratulation and bodily disarray. His hat tumbled to the carpet, his heavy umbrella slipped between his knees with a thud; he reached ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... at this moment, and Dr. Ashton went in search of host and hostess. Arthur caught sight of his tall figure, and made a sign at once of recognition and summons. Struggling between a young Episcopal clergyman and a corpulent old lady, Dr. Ashton made his way with difficulty to the spot where his ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... I would have invented all manner of etiquettes, or any sort of contrivance, to save myself from showing face. "Heavens! The Empress is below middle size, and so corpulent (PUISSANTE), she looks like a ball; she is ugly to the utmost (LAIDE AU POSSIBLE), and without air or grace." Kaiser Joseph's youngest Daughter,—the gods, it seems, have not been kind to her in figure or feature! And her mind corresponds to her appearance: she is bigoted to ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... and, though a little thin on the top and front, had not a grey hair amongst it. His complexion was a very uncommon one, being of a light sallow colour, differing from almost any other I ever met with. From his having become corpulent, he had lost much of his personal activity, and, if we are to give credit to those who attended him, a very considerable portion of his mental energy was also gone. It is certain his habits were very lethargic while he ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... once were Men," Gorki's sinister experience and pathos are essential factors in the accusing symbolism. He relates in the unpretending style of a chronicler how the corpulent citizens reside on the hill-tops, amid well-tended gardens. When it rains the whole refuse of the upper town ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... he created crises as rabbits create their young, nine at a time. In those fuddled incompetent days before the Great War the crisis was a little-known phenomenon. Here and there in the drab routine of peaceful corpulent years there flashed in the prosperous firmament the baleful light of a great anxiety. Agadir was one; CARSON and his gun-runners was another. But they were few; they came like rare ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... carriage, and dashed with such force against the stones on the road, that she had been taken up bloody, and, to all appearances, lifeless. Her face had suffered severely, and to her death she bore the deep-red scars which had been left by her wounds. Her figure, too, had lost its grace, and was now so corpulent that she moved slowly and heavily through the rooms, where, in former years, she had stood by the side of her "Francis," the most beautiful woman of her own ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... thro' in many Places, a work of great Skill and Labour; they had still five and twenty Foot to descend from the Ground; Sheppard fasten'd a Sheet and Blanket to the Bars, and causes Madam to take off her Gown and Petticoat, and sent her out first, and she being more Corpulent than himself, it was with great Pain and Difficulty that he got her through the Interval, and observing his Directions, was instantly down, and more frighted than hurt; the Phylosopher follow'd, and ...
— The History of the Remarkable Life of John Sheppard • Daniel Defoe
... sent a boat to Oparre, which returned in the afternoon with Oberreeroah and two women, her servants. As she was old and corpulent it was with difficulty that we helped her up the ship's side. As soon as she was in the ship she sat down on the gangway and, clasping my knees in her arms, expressed her pleasure at seeing me by a flood of ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... Canet submitted to it all: he tried to persuade himself that he thought like Manousse. He knew perfectly well that this was not the case: such ideas scared him: they were shocking to his common sense. And he had no love for the people. And, in addition, he had no courage. This big, bulky, corpulent young man, with his clean-shaven pinkish face, his short breathing, his pleasant, pompous, and rather childish way of speaking, with a chest like the Farnese Hercules, (he was a fair hand at boxing and singlestick), was the most timid of men. If he took a certain pride in being taken for a man ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... truth in fashion. The volume of love, like a pattern-book, fell open, and this well-dressed gentleman was engraved upon her heart. The most captious young chit, such as Dolly herself, could scarcely have called him either corpulent or old. Every day he could be seen to be growing younger, with the aid of fresh fish as a totally novel ingredient in his system; his muscle increased with the growth of brain-power, and the shoemaker was punching a fresh hole in his belt, an inch further back, every ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... very fond of the exercises of swimming, riding, shooting, fencing, and sparring; greatly devoted to his dogs, delighted in music, and was known as remarkably superstitious. Of his charity and kindheartedness there was no end. Always conscious of his deformity, and terribly afraid of becoming corpulent, he was sedulously careful ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... Draupadi as stake, who is neither short nor tall, neither spare nor corpulent, and who is possessed of blue curly locks, I will now play with thee. Possessed of eyes like the leaves of the autumn lotus, and fragrant also as the autumn lotus, equal in beauty unto her (Lakshmi) ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... admitted, stated that he had come to request that his Majesty would be pleased to put him again upon full pay. His Majesty raised many objections, and stated his inability to comply with his request; upon which the corpulent officer exclaimed, embracing with his arms as far as he could, his enormous paunch, "My God! your Majesty, how can you imagine that I can fill this big belly of mine with only my half-pay?" This argumentum ad ventrem so tickled King William, that he was put on ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Miss Parke, a concert-singer, was once angry because Billington's name was in bigger type. The latter ordered her name to be printed in the smallest letters used; "and much Miss Parke gained by her corpulent type," says the narrator. Lord Mount Edgcumbe tells us that the operas in which she specially excelled were "La Clemenza di Scipione," composed for her by John Christian Bach; Paesiello's "Elfrida"; "Armida," ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... had touched them lightly in its flight. They both looked young and hale, and full of vigour. The only difference in them was a wrinkle or two at the corners of the eyes, and a few grey hairs mingling with the brown. Perhaps John was a little more corpulent than when he was a youth; but he could wield the fore-hammer as ...
— The Thorogood Family • R.M. Ballantyne
... enchanted the hairdresser himself, that he and his family sat in armchairs, and in cool undresses, on the pavement outside, enjoying the gratification of the passers-by, with lazy dignity. The family had retired to rest when we went to bed, at midnight; but the hairdresser (a corpulent man, in drab slippers) was still sitting there, with his legs stretched out before him, and evidently couldn't bear to have ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... is excessively ugly, with a fat swollen sallow face, very corpulent, besides short and entirely without figure. His great eyes roll gloomily around; the expression of his features is severe; he looks like the incarnation of fate: only his mouth is well shaped, and his ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... to his indulgences. He now grows discontented with plain, every-day fare, and sets out on a gastronomical tour, in search of foreign luxuries. He is to be found in myriads among the reeds of the Delaware, banqueting on their seeds; grows corpulent with good feeding, and soon acquires the unlucky renown of the ortolan. Whereever he goes, pop! pop! pop! the rusty firelocks of the country are cracking on every side; he sees his companions falling by the thousands around him; he is the reed-bird, ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... original writing. For her, his former wealth of brown locks still waved in the place of the closely cut, thin grey hair; she saw the bushy moustache fine and curled, the wrinkled skin ruddy and smooth, the somewhat corpulent figure slender and pliant; she transferred to the man of fifty before her, feature by feature, the image which lived in her faithful memory, transfigured and handsomer than the reality had ever been. And Rudolf did the same. His imagination effaced the little wrinkles around her eyes and ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... but a dull time of it, poor souls, in the lonely house. Towards the end of December, they subscribed among themselves to buy one of those wonderful Christmas Numbers—presenting year after year the same large-eyed ladies, long-legged lovers, corpulent children, snow landscapes, and gluttonous merry-makings—which have become a national institution: say, the pictorial plum puddings of the ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... of the organ or tissue is favored or restricted. The size and shape of an individual, as a whole, as well as of the specialized cell masses composing him, as hands and feet, the nose and ears, and so on, are therefore controlled by them. Whether an organism is to be tall or short, lean or corpulent, graceful or awkward, is decided by their interactions. These, like human covenants, vary with the different reactions of the parties to the contract. And so a great deal depends upon whether they work harmoniously or discordantly, and upon ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... the time when they were laying the corpse in the sarcophagus, and were bending it with some force, which they were compelled to do, in consequence of the coffin having been made too short, the body, which was extremely corpulent, burst, and so intolerable a stench issued from the grave, that all the perfumes which arose from all the censers of the priests and acolytes were of no avail; and the rites were concluded in haste, and the assembly, struck with horror, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... Representative in the days of the contest between "Old Hickory" and "Biddle's Bank." He was a type of a gentleman of the old school, and he recalled Washington Irving's picture of the master of Bracebridge Hall. The bluff and hearty manner, the corpulent person, and the open countenance of the General, his dress of the aristocratic blue and buff, and his gold- headed cane, all tallied with the descriptions of the English country gentleman of the olden time. He was greatly ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... opera could scarcely exist in those cities unless it were supported as much by people of fashion as by people of taste. But I was hardly prepared to find in Hamburg a parody of polite life in this respect. During the whole performance there was a continual interchange of social greetings between corpulent ship-chandlers, their heads violently greased for the occasion, and certain frowsy women sprinkled scantily through the house. There was an old gentleman sitting next to me who turned the performance to a nobler use; he had apparently brought his son there for the purpose of tuition; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... new captain, who was a short, corpulent, open-countenanced man, he informed me he had conversed with my former captain respecting me. "We lost both the lieutenants by the yellow fever the latter part of last cruise," said he, "and if you like to be first lieutenant, I will request the Admiralty ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... the beacon, together with Peter Fortune, a person singularly adapted for a residence of this kind, both from the urbanity of his manners and the versatility of his talents. Fortune, in his person, was of small stature, and rather corpulent. Besides being a good Scots cook, he had acted both as groom and house-servant; he had been a soldier, a sutler, a writer's clerk, and an apothecary, from which he possessed the art of writing and suggesting ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... He became so corpulent that he was unable to move, and was carried off by an attack of indigestion on the night of 3rd September, 1870, a few hours after hearing of the catastrophe of Sedan. The downfall of the regime which he prided himself on having helped to establish seemed to have crushed him like ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... ancestors is called a willow plate, when there are a majority of orange trees so extremely fruitful they have neglected to grow a leaf? Why is it not an orange plate? Look at that boat! And in plain sight of it, two pagodas, a summer house, a water-sweep, and a pair of corpulent swallows; you would have me believe that a couple are ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... a corpulent carp Who wanted to play on a harp, But to his chagrin So short was his fin That he couldn't reach up ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... hand, the lady perceived, in time, that the gentleman looked ten years older by daylight; that no one could call him corpulent exactly; that he might be heavy on hand, only perhaps he wanted his breakfast—men did; that the Pall Mall and Piccadilly type of man very soon palled, and that, in short, that steam-tug would be quite ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the inn in which I stayed was a man of about fifty, of goodly person and somewhat corpulent, comely presence, good humor, and privileged freedom. He had a pretty daughter. He was an exception to the ordinary father in China, in the fact that he was proud of her, as he was of his house and his faring. But in all conscience he should have ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... door, but for a moment there was no one to be seen; and then, recalling the idiosyncrasy of a certain new friend whom by that very token he guessed it might be, he came out on to the landing, to find a great big friendly man in corpulent blue serge, a rough, dark beard, and a slouched hat, standing a few feet off in a deprecating way,—which really meant that if there were any ladies in the room with Mr. Mesurier, he would prefer to call another time. For though he had two or three grownup daughters of his own, this giant ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... nativity, she is the promissory pledge of great success in life and continual good fortune. She produces a full stature, fair, pale complexion, round face, gray eyes, short arms, thick hands and feet, smooth, corpulent, and phlegmatic body. Blemishes in the eyes, or a peculiar weakness in the sight, is the result of her being afflicted by the Sun. Her conjunction, semi-sextile, sextile, or trine, to Jupiter, is exceeding fortunate; and she is said by the old Astrologers ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... wonderful. I would I could say he was plump; that word does not begin to express his condition. It would be pleasant to call him stout; that would not give the glimmer of an idea of his size. Corpulent would be a refined way of stating it. Alas! corpulent means nothing as far as Mephibosheth is concerned. That animal measured seven feet and twenty-two inches round his body. He weighed—truth is great, and must be spoken—he weighed five hundred ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... resolved to leave their dull residence for the charms of the upper region. Men, women, and children ascended by means of the vine, but, when about half the nation had reached the surface of the earth, a corpulent woman, who was clambering up the vine, broke it with her weight, and closed upon herself and the rest of the nation the ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... next hear of him, with myriads of his kind, banqueting among the reeds of the Delaware, and grown corpulent with good feeding. He has changed his name in traveling. Boblincoln no more, he is the reedbird now, the much-sought-for tidbit of Pennsylvanian epicures, the rival in unlucky fame of the ortolan! Wherever he goes, pop! pop! pop! every rusty firelock in the ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... his treasures, we discovered a small lad about fourteen or fifteen years of age, dressed in a bellboy's uniform which had been made for some one far more corpulent of stature. The sleeves reached far down over his hands, the tight fitting, gold buttoned jacket strangely resembled a cross between a bag and an overcoat, and though a serious reef had been taken in the trousers at the waist line, the legs would twist and ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... from one to another. The fatigues of war, especially the forced march of the last days, were very apparent in their persons. Some were tall and slender with an angular slimness; others were stocky and corpulent with short neck and head sunk between the shoulders. These had lost much of their fat in a month's campaign, the wrinkled and flabby skin hanging in folds in various parts of their bodies. All had shaved heads, the same ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... as Tetuanui Tavana, or Monsieur le Chef de Mataiea, Tetuanui, and his wife, Haamoura, were the salt of the earth. The chief was a large man, molded on a great frame, and very corpulent, as are most Polynesians of more than thirty years. He was about sixty, strong and sweet by nature, brave and simple. His vahine was very stout, half blind from cataracts, but ever busied about her household ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... Heine wrote in his "Confessions": "In May of last year I was forced to take to my bed, and since then I have not risen. I confess frankly that meanwhile a great change has taken place in me. I no longer am a fat Hellenist, the freest man since Goethe, a jolly, somewhat corpulent Hellenist, with a contemptuous smile for lean Jews—I am only a poor Jew, sick unto death, a picture of ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... enthusiasm was pleasing to behold. It assured Barry that Little was not making the trip with a view to growing corpulent in the lazy luxury of immaculate attire and cabin cushions. The amateur shellback caught sight of Barry, standing regarding him with an amused grin, and he ceased his labors. Thrusting his broom into the hands of a sailor, Little ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... first tumultuous riot of inquiry, when underwriters had climbed over desks and each other to hear again of the wreck of the Titan, one—the noisiest of all, a corpulent, hook-nosed man with flashing black eyes—had broken away from the crowd and made his way to the Captain's room, where, after a draught of brandy, he had seated himself heavily, with a groan that came from ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... just as the oft-recurring tipsiness of his old gentlemen delighted him, though he was the most abstemious of men. I am now speaking of his middle-class people—those wonderful philistines of either sex; those elaborately capped and corpulent old ladies; those muttonchop-whiskered, middle-aged gentlemen with long upper lips and florid complexions, receding chins, noses almost horizontal in their prominence; those artless damsels who trouble themselves so little about the latest ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... the Professor of Mathematics, and afterwards one of the early editors of the Wealth of Nations—met him soon after his arrival in London, and says he was looking very ill, and was evidently going to decay. While in his usual health he was, though not corpulent, yet rather stout than spare, but he was now reduced to skin and bone. He was able, however, to move about in society and see old friends and make new. Windham in his Diary mentions meeting him at several different places, and he was ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... I have said, was a small but corpulent man, and stood very upright, with a slight backward inclination, to balance, I suppose, the exceeding greatness of his rotundity. His countenance habitually expressed disapproval, and his shaggy brows were drawn down now in an angry frown. I perceived ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... their hostess, laughing. "And my lovely fat Michael!—he's getting so corpulent he can hardly waddle. He and the puppy are really very like each other; both of them find it easier to roll than to run." She cast an inquiring eye round the room: ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... him, but he had married a good housewife. Mrs. Bergson was a fair-skinned, corpulent woman, heavy and placid like her son, Oscar, but there was something comfortable about her; perhaps it was her own love of comfort. For eleven years she had worthily striven to maintain some semblance of household order amid ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... 14th of June, 1727, two horsemen might have been perceived galloping along the road from Chelsea to Richmond. The foremost, cased in the jackboots of the period, was a broad-faced, jolly-looking, and very corpulent cavalier; but, by the manner in which he urged his horse, you might see that he was a bold as well as a skilful rider. Indeed, no man loved sport better; and in the hunting-fields of Norfolk, no ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in Spain, after he had a long time attacked it to no purpose, with torches dipped in the gum called Galbanum: others said he was so named, because, in a lingering disease, he made use of it as a remedy, wrapped up in wool: others, on account of his being prodigiously corpulent, such a one being called, in the language of the Gauls, Galba; or, on the contrary, because he was of a slender habit of body, like those insects which breed in a sort of oak, and are called Galbae. Sergius Galba, a person of consular rank [644], and the most eloquent ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... small boy, Master Crewe, dressed to look like Henry VIII. in the style of Holbein. With broad shoulders and a rich dress, he stands on his sturdy legs quite the figure of Henry. But the face is one beam of boyish laughter, and on the top of the little replica of the body of the corpulent monarch the effect of the childish ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... individually, that even to the mere reader it conveys the clear impression of personal acquaintance. Falstaff is the most agreeable and entertaining knave that ever was portrayed. His contemptible qualities are not disguised: old, lecherous, and dissolute; corpulent beyond measure, and always intent upon cherishing his body with eating, drinking, and sleeping; constantly in debt, and anything but conscientious in his choice of means by which money is to be raised; a cowardly ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... the smoking-room. I could not believe that Jack had grown very stout. 'I'll show you his photograph,' said the colonel. An album was brought down from a dusty shelf, and then I had to admit that my old friend had become positively corpulent. But it is not Jack I want to speak about. I turned listlessly over the pages of the album, stopping suddenly at the face of a beautiful girl. You are ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... sight, in that moment of turmoil and confusion, to behold the placid and philosophical expression of Mr. Pickwick's face, albeit somewhat flushed with exertion, as he stood with his arms firmly clasped round the extensive waist of their corpulent host, thus restraining the impetuosity of his passion, while the fat boy was scratched, and pulled, and pushed from the room by all the females congregated therein. He had no sooner released his hold, than the man entered to announce that the gig ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... the two had something round him that had certainly once been the jacket of a very corpulent man, for it reached almost to the boy's ancles; the whole hung fast by a piece of the sleeve and a single brace, made from the seam of what was now the rest of the lining. It was very difficult to see the transition from jacket ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... they are nightly compelled to breathe, do their worst to annoy you; and then, Phoebus Apollo! how the sleepers snore! There is every variety of this music, from the low wheeze of the asthmatic, to the stentorian grunt of the corpulent and profound. Nose after nose lifts up its tuneful oratory, until the place is vocal. Some communicative free-thinkers talk in their sleep, and altogether, they make a concerto and a diapason equal ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... and captivated his attention: and already the first volumes were corpulent of what was eventually to become his gigantic herbiary. His brother, about to leave for Vezins on vacation, was told of the specimens which he wanted to complete his collection; for although he had never set foot there since his first departure, he recalled, with remarkable precision, ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... certain of the issue, preferred to take no part in this affair; he prudently holds back, he shies away, and lets the crowd push him into the council chamber, where the Queen, the young Dauphin, and the ladies have taken refuge.[2548] There, with his tall, corpulent figure, he formed a sort of shield to forestall useless and compromising injuries. In the mean time, in the Oeil de Boeuf, he lets things take their course; everything will be done in his absence that ought to be done, and in this he seems to have calculated justly.—On ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... births in the cabin were completely occupied by females). As we were going down the ladder, the appearance of so many recumbent persons, faintly distinguishable by the light of a solitary taper, reminded us of a floating catacomb; here, crawling under a cot which contained two very corpulent priests, upon a spare cable, wrapt up in our own great coats, ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... pantry door when any of the family knocked to ask for hot water, or came with a letter for the post. By nature a bachelor, he was instinctively ashamed of his family, and when the weary-looking wife, the thin, shy girl, or the corpulent, stupid-faced son were with him and he heard steps outside, he would come out like a little wasp, and, unmistakably resenting the intrusion, ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... one of the marvels of English society; the most sought after of all its members, though no one could tell you exactly why. He was a little oily Portuguese, middle-aged, corpulent, and somewhat bald, with dark eyes of sympathy, not unmixed with humor. No one knew who he was, and in a country the most scrutinizing as to personal details, no one inquired or cared to know. A quarter of a century ago an English noble had caught him in his travels, and brought him ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... supper, and Casey wanted to tell him that he was slicing the bacon twice as thick as it should be. The corpulent man, whom he dimly remembered as a coroner, was talking with a big, burly individual whom Casey guessed was the sheriff. A man came in and announced to the big man that the car was fixed and they could go any time. Mart, who had been staring morosely down at his shackled ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... that the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find any thing to say. We began now to wish for conversation; but no one seemed inclined to descend from his dignity, or first propose a topick of discourse. At last a corpulent gentleman, who had equipped himself for this expedition with a scarlet surtout and a large hat with a broad lace, drew out his watch, looked on it in silence, and then held it dangling at his finger. This was, I suppose, understood by all the company as an invitation ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... had neither boats nor lighters of its own. The first troops, climbing ashore at the railway pier at Daquiri, marched west along the coast to Siboney, and then plunged inland, each regiment for itself, along the narrow jungle trail leading to Santiago. Shafter himself, corpulent and sick, followed as he could. Before he established his control over the army on land the head of the column had engaged the enemy at Las Guasimas, nine miles from Santiago, on June 24. The First Volunteer Cavalry, under the command of Colonel Leonard M. Wood, with Theodore Roosevelt as ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... himself up from his chair and came forward to the top of the steps, his tall, corpulent figure towering above the men below much as his fortunes towered ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... accompany him to his bedchamber, and have often been obliged to support him on the little staircase which led from his cabinet to the corridor. He frequently used to say at this time, "I fear that when I am forty I shall become a great eater: I have a foreboding that I shall grow very corpulent." This fear of obesity, though it annoyed him very much, did not appear to have the least foundation, judging from his habitual temperance and spare habit of body. He asked me who was my physician. I told him M. Corvisart, whom his brother Louis had recommended to me. A few days after ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... infrequently a little dull, especially to the uninitiated, and there have not been wanting certain sinister suggestions that now and then, during the monotonous delivery of some of the longer poems, elderly and corpulent devotees listen only with the spiritual ear, the physical sense being obscured by an abstraction not to be distinguished by an ordinary observer from slumber. The reader, however, is bound to assume that all are listening, and if some sleep and others ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... Washington the aristocratic planter shrank from contact with Putnam the blunt, and at times perhaps uncouth-appearing, farmer. Writing about that time, a surgeon in the American army said: "This is my first interview with this celebrated hero, Putnam. In his person he is corpulent and clumsy, but carries a bold, undaunted front. He exhibits little of the refinements of a well-educated gentleman, but much of the character of the ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... father, a wholesale merchant in Moscow. With him we were able to converse either in French or German, both of which languages he could speak more purely than his native Russian. Our good-natured, corpulent host had emigrated, in the pioneer days, from the steppes of southern Russia, and had grown ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben |
