"Portly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dear Clodius; he has not invited me,' replied Diomed, a man of portly frame and of middle age. 'By Pollux, a scurvy trick! for they say his suppers are the best ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... 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
... Johnson was in and they were ushered into a large old fashioned apartment, scrupulously neat and formal. Mrs. Johnson was a somewhat portly woman turned of sixty, whose face had settled into severe lines, and she eyed her visitors ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... prologue is interesting, for the picture which it gives of Chaucer himself; riding apart from and indifferent to the rest of the pilgrims, with eyes fixed on the ground, and an "elvish", morose, or rather self-absorbed air; portly, if not actually stout, in body; and evidently a man out of the common, as the closing words of the ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... little world their childhood knew Large with a land of mountain lake and scaur, And larger yet with wonder love belief Toward Walter Scott who living far away Sent them this wealth of joy and noble grief. The book and they must part, but day by day, In lines that thwart like portly spiders ran They wrote ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... station precluded 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 ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... at once," said he, and he disappeared behind the safe. The two customers discussed the watch. Then the door opened in the glass screen, and a portly, middle-aged man showed himself. He was dressed in blue broad-cloth, with a turned- down collar and a small black tie. His waistcoat displayed a plain but heavy gold watch-chain, and his cuff-links were of plain gold. His eye-glasses were gold-rimmed. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... me in the mist, For only lovers know that I am here After his piping, shall the organist Be portly and appear? ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke
... of any importance took place. Dundas continued to be a portly pluralist, utterly unable to overtake the work of three important offices, with the conduct of the war often superadded; and Chatham remained at the Admiralty until the close of 1794, to the annoyance of all champions of efficiency. In the course of that year Pitt urged ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... tall, portly man of fifty, sleek and evidently on excellent terms with himself. Indeed, he was but five years older than his nephew, Ebenezer Graham, and looked the younger of the two, despite the relationship. If ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Harry, brighter for the first time. Relief was come at last, and the study-door closing over the Doctor's portly form was the welcomest sight Harry had seen for ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... hangings of the apartment moving in front of her, and perceiving a bulky protuberance, she immediately divined that the mayoress was hiding behind there, and that the protuberance was caused by her portly form. Now she discovered the mayor's design, and that it was probably a caprice of his spouse, and she made a vow not to suffer herself to be shorn unless she acquired by these means the five hundred maravedis needful ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... the monks and civil guards, because of their want of manners," a portly lady was saying, "but now that I see of what service they are, I could almost marry one of them. I ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... is a small steam-engine at one side, with an escape-pipe and valve projecting into the Circus, and a bundle of parti-coloured stuff is fluttering overhead opposite. From loose-boxes, three or four horses are examining these ominous preparations with apprehensive eyes. Enter a Portly Gentleman in a tall hat and frock-coat, who bows to the audience, and is but faintly applauded, owing to a disappointed sense that the ideal Horse-trainer would not tame in a tall hat. However, he merely appears to introduce Professor NORTON B. SMITH, who, turning out to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, July 2, 1892 • Various
... a man could run fast enough to cotch her," said Candace; and then her portly person shook with the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... restless air about her full of intelligence, as she manoeuvred her brother towards a stone seat, guarded by a couple of cupids reining in sleepy-looking lions in stone, where, under the shade of a lime-tree, her little petticoated brother of two years old was asleep, cradled in the lap of a large, portly, handsome woman, in a dark dress, a white cap and apron, and dark crimson cloak, loosely put back, as it was an August day. Native costumes were then, as now, always worn by French nurses; but this was not the garb of any province of the kingdom, ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The portly housewife paused in her work to cast a look of scorn upon the speaker, but Grannis rushed into ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... after the fashion of the midshipmen on a certain second visit to the lake. How the negroes grinned delight and surprise at the vagaries of English lads—a species of animal altogether new to them; and how they grinned still more when certain staid and portly dignitaries caught the infection, and proved by more than one good leap that they too had been ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... lovely, golden-headed Lucrezia, the innocent cause of all this hate that festered in the Lord of Pesaro's soul; there was their mother, the nobly handsome Giovanozza de Catanei, from whom the Borgias derived their auburn heads; and there was their cousin, Giovanni Borgia, Cardinal of Monreale, portly ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... hush fell over the adjoining tables as Mrs. Stark's elegance bore down upon them in her majestic way. She was portly and heavy-motioned, as poor Monty was apt to be when he should arrive at her age; and chairs had to be drawn in closer, feet tucked under them, and heads bent forward ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... 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 ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... exclaims Theo, waving a handkerchief to the young Virginian: but Warrington did not see Miss Lambert. The Virginian was walking arm-in-arm with a portly clergyman in a crisp rustling silk gown, and the two went ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Milinowski, a portly, imposing American widow, who, after twenty years spent under the marital rule of a Prussian army officer, "takes kindly to the prose of life." She is the exemplary and not unkindly chaperone of Miss Caroline Lester, heroine of Charlotte ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... under the influence of the lights, the gorgeous rooms and the brilliant company, but he gazed with clear eyes and the most eager interest at Bigot, whose reputation had spread far, even in the British colonies. He saw a man of middle years, portly, his red face sprinkled with many pimples, probably from high living, not handsome and perhaps at first repellent, but with an expression of vigor and ease, and an open, frank manner that, at length, attracted. His dress was much like de Mezy's, but ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... water. Men and women, boys and girls, are there—the men and women at a short distance from each other. Immediately above the water are platforms with huge stationary umbrellas over them, and on these men are squatted, whose portly appearance betokens ease and plenty. These are Gungaputrs—sons of the Ganges—a class of Brahmans, whose duty it is to take care of the clothes of the people as they bathe, to put a mark on their forehead to show they have bathed, and who receive ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... it easily," whispered one, as the portly citizen stepped on the bridge and came in sight under the lamp-light, "but I guess it ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... on the ocean; There, where your argosies[2] with portly sail, Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood, Do overpeer the petty traffickers, That curt'sy to them, do them reverence, As they fly by ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... girls are frolicsome as gazelles and far less timid. They have none of the pseudo-bashfulness of the townsfolk. For the rest, only the dessus du panier of womankind goes veiled hereabouts—a few portly dames of Gafsa, that is, who are none the worse, I suspect, for keeping their features hidden. Perhaps the good looks of these Leila people are a heritage from olden days, for this oasis is known to be a race islet, inhabited almost exclusively by men of the Ellez stock—one of the three races ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... moustache more aggressively terrible than that of Kaiser Bill himself and his demeanor was such as to make that of a roaring lion seem like a docile lamb by comparison. An Iron Cross depended from a heavy chain about his bull neck and his portly breast was so covered with the junk of rank and commemoration that it seemed like one of those boards from which street hawkers sell ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... 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
... of Ethiopic types cast, to enable M. d'Abbadie to prepare a catalogue of African manuscripts. And our Secretary of State for the Home Department has presented various libraries and public institutions with two portly folios, entitled Liber Munerum Publicorum Hiberniae, or the Establishments of Ireland, from the Nineteenth of King Stephen to the Seventh of George IV., which we may accept as an addition to the Memorials of History, commenced two or three years since. Then, as ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... accompanied with greyhounds, loving 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 ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... would the folks over the way say, to see the "professor" walking out with a big turkey under his arm? That was the way the thing presented itself to the good-natured college-student acting as private tutor in the family. But Mrs. Simpson, the portly and practical housewife, had no such idea of the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... about for the cause of this commotion and saw a smiling man, portly and impressive, coming toward them with a dignified mince in his walk. And Mr. Flummers was introduced with half-humorous ceremony. He had rather a pleasant expression of countenance, and men who were well acquainted with him said that he had, ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... monastic system of Europe arose—that system which presents us with learning in the place of ferocious ignorance, with overflowing charity to mankind in the place of malignant hatred of society. The portly abbot on his easy going palfrey, his hawk upon his fist, scarce looks like the lineal descendant of the hermit starved into insanity. How wide the interval between the monk of the third and the monk of the thirteenth century—between the caverns ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... a policeman bestowed them upon a Third Avenue car and all went well until Patrick missed his lunch and charged Ignatius Aloysius with its abstraction. Words ensued which were not easily to be forgotten even when the refreshment was found—flat and horribly distorted—under the portly frame ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... from cover unto cover; A book the like of which 't were hard to find Filled with ROMANCE of every sort and kind. I'll write it as the Gestours wrote of old, In prose, blank-verse, and rhyme it shall be told. And GILLIAN— Some day perhaps, my dear, when you are grown A portly dame with children of your own You'll gather all your troop about your knee And read to them this ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... been frightened before, but he felt undeniably nervous when he saw the eyes of two thousand people fixed upon him. He blushed and seemed disposed to screen himself from observation. But at this moment a tall, portly man advanced from the front of the tent, and came up to where ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.
... and were presented to Black Smith, the most influential and authoritative of the Seneca sachems. He is about sixty years old, is somewhat portly, is easy enough in his manners, and is well disposed, and even kindly towards all who convinced him that they have no sinister designs ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... January there arrived in El Toyon a gentleman with a scrubbing brush moustache, a pleasant, portly personality, a pair of twinkling black eyes, a seemingly limitless amount of leisure, discriminating taste for liquors and cigars, a fountain pen and a check book. The name he wrote upon the hotel register was Edward Kinsell. He disabused the mind of the proprietor, ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... at this noontime luncheon, after talking with the portly, conservative, aggressive Arneel and the shrewd director of the stock-exchange, Cowperwood met a varied company of men ranging in age from thirty-five to sixty-five gathered about the board in a private dining-room of heavily carved black walnut, with ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... kissed the children, shook hands cordially with the gentleman of the party, and then the doors were swung to, and they were shut from the sight of the street; but just as the man entered, the light from the hall and the light from the street revealed the flushed face and portly figure of Robert Belcher. ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... sacks, their raised headdresses, their black calashes, their lace ruffles, and their high crook'd canes, preceded by their aged servant, Samuel; who, after he had wheeled his mistress to church in her Bath-chair, carried the prayer-books up the aisle, and opened and shut the pew! There too was the portly Dr. Griffiths, of the Monthly Review, with his literary wife in her neat and elevated wire-winged cap! And oft-times the vivacious and angelic Duchess of Devonshire, whose bloom had not then suffered from the canker-worm ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... hookah, and giving orders to his ministers; in another, he is at his devotions; on the third, at his sports, shooting hogs and deer; and on the fourth, at war, with some French officers of distinction figuring before him. He is distinguished by his portly person in all, and by his favourite light-brown dress in three places. At his devotions he is standing all in white before the tutelary god of his house, Hardeo.[15] In various parts, Krishna is represented at his sports with the milkmaids. The colours are ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... real glimpse of England on the 14th. Off Eddystone Light the pilot came on board. He was a very large portly man and very nervous about being dropped into the sea. I should judge he weighed at least two hundred and fifty pounds. The ladder he had to climb was made of rope with the rungs woven in, and he made them heave him a line which he fastened ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... stickler for uniform—stopped opposite a very portly sailor whose medal-ribbon was an inch or so too low down. Fixing the man with his eye, the admiral asked: "Did you get that medal for eating, my man?" On the man replying "No, sir," the admiral rapped out: "Then why the deuce do you wear ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... his face, lo, and behold! the moon shining in the Nor-west—yea, the sun blazing in his glory—had not a more crimson aspect than Reuben. Like the pig-eyed Chinese folk on tea-cups, his peepers were diminutive and twinkling; but his nose made up for them—and that it did—being portly in all its dimensions broad and long, as to colour, liker a radish than any other production in nature. In short, he was as bonny a figure as ever man of woman born clapped eye on; and was cleaving away most devoutly, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... and broad at the nostrils, although it departed but little from the straight line of the classic model. Altogether the Signora Pandolfi, christened Maria Luisa, and wife to Marzio the silver-chiseller, was a portly and pompous-looking person, who wore an air of knowing her position, and of being sure to maintain it. Nevertheless, there was a kindly expression in her fat face, and if her eyes looked sleepy they ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... the evening when a britzska stopped at the post-house at Coblentz. The passage-boat from Bingen had just arrived; and a portly judge from the Danube, a tall, gaunt Prussian officer, a sketching English artist, two University students, and some cloth-merchants, returning from Frankfort fair, were busily occupied at a long table in the centre of the room, ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... warm, and Miss Warren's somewhat portly suitor clung persistently to the wide, cool veranda. Adah sat there frequently also; sometimes she read to the children fairy stories, of which Adela, Mr. Hearn's little girl, had brought a great store, and she seemed to enjoy them quite as much as her eager-eyed listeners; but more often she ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... my stay, one especially dwells in my memory. On arriving rather early one evening, I noticed a large, portly man, wearing the broad red ribbon of the Legion of Honor, and at once saw that he could be no other than Prince Victor Napoleon, the Bonaparte heir to the crown of France. Though he was far larger than the great Napoleon, and had ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... appearance was in accord with the strong individuality of his character. He was of massive, compact form, six feet in height, over two hundred pounds in weight and rather portly in later years, of firm and aristocratic bearing, a commanding figure: "a very castle of a man" was the phrase which Washington Irving applied to him. The bust[104] made by David d'Angers in Paris in 1828 gives to Cooper a classic splendor of head and countenance ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... Wedmore found a partner in the coachman, who was a portly and solemn person, with no talents in the way of dancing or of conversation. Doreen danced with the butler, who, between nervousness and gloom, found it impossible to conceal his opinion that master was making a fool of ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... of yesterday's ship there had been in this natural Eden (leaving the savages out of the reckoning) several thousand Adams, and but some threescore Eves. And for the most part, the Eves were either portly and bustling or withered and shrewish housewives, of age and experience to defy the serpent. These were different. Ninety slender figures decked in all the bravery they could assume; ninety comely faces, pink and white, or clear brown with the rich blood showing through; ninety pair ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... grieved and shocked at his appearance. He seemed twenty years older. I scarcely recognized in the pale, thin, invalid, the portly country ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... portly man entered the room with the assurance of one much at home here and, with an exclamation, Irving ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... Ithuriel's spear Bids every Fiend unmask'd appear, The vizard tears from every face, And dooms them to a dire disgrace. For e'er they compass their escape, Each takes perforce a native shape— The Leader of the wrathful Band, Behold a portly Female stand! She raves, impelled by private pique, This mean unjust revenge to seek; From vice to save this virtuous Age, Thus does she vent indecent rage! What child has she of promise fair, Who claims a fostering Mother's care? Whose Innocence requires defence, Or forms at least ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... said Young R., glancing up at him, and beneath the quizzical look in those sleepy grey eyes, Mr. Brimberly's whiskers wilted slightly. "You're getting a trifle too—er—portly to hop round on your knees, aren't you, Brimberly? Pray sit down and ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... brain immediately raised up the portly figure of his tutor before him, raising his eyebrows, and questioning him about why he was there; but these thoughts were chased away directly after, as he came to an opening in the trees, through which ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... An aged lover—a portly, Bald lover, a trifle too stiff, With manners that would have been courtly, And would have ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... 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 ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... of a hundred pounds for the mayor's portrait, and he admitted that he was confoundedly short of money. The painter was anxious that Lavengro should sit to him for his Plutarch, which honour that gentleman firmly declined. Years afterwards he saw the portrait of the mayor, a 'mighty portly man, with a bull's head, black hair, a body like a dray horse, and legs and thighs corresponding; a man six foot high at the least. To his bull's head, black hair and body, the painter had done justice; there was one point, however, ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... agreed, slipped off her high chair, and saw Mrs. Stilton's full portly figure take the place. But Daisy's labours were not ended. She saw one of the Irish labourers sitting with his eyes straight before him and nothing on his plate for them to look at. Daisy went round. It was her feast; she felt she ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... witnesses was almost welcome. They were a dissenting minister, and a neat, portly, respectable widow, the owner of a fancy shop, and both knew Mr. Mauleverer as a popular lecturer upon philanthropical subjects, who came periodically to Bristol, and made himself very acceptable. Their faith in him was genuine, and he had even interested them in the F. ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... customers, invited us to enter in a manner so polite and 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, my children! ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... the story of two cousins, Dicky and Emmeline Lestrange, stranded on a remote island with a beautiful lagoon. As children, they are cared for by Paddy Button, a portly sailor who drinks himself to death after only two and a half years in paradise. Frightened and confused by the man's gruesome corpse, the children flee to another part of Palm Tree Island. Over a period of five years, ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... flocked to see them, and Doctor Johnson, a resident English physician, was constant in his attendance, knowing that the Consul must pay his bill. Three French priests also called upon them, one of whom proved to be no Frenchman, but a portly, handsome, good-humoured Irishman, well known and much disliked by the Polynesian protestant missionaries. A strong attempt was made by Guy and Wilson to get the men to do duty. A schooner was about to sail for Sydney, and they were ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... wouldn't say that," Persis interrupted. "It's just that I've heard of 'em before." As she left the elevator on the second floor, two women glided past her, one the portly widow with abundant crepe who is not easily differentiated, the other a stately girl with blonde hair and a scornfully tilted chin. Instinct told Persis that the ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... begun, and he accomplished that purpose; for, with the well-thumbed cards lying between them and three half-emptied steins of beer on the table, Ersten was opposite a pink-faced man with curly gray hair, whose clothes sat upon his slightly portly person with fashion-plate precision. It was this very same suit about which Ersten was ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... 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
... four smaller ones at each corner. When Mr. Esterworth was at home, which was almost always, it was his vanity to keep a red flag flying from the centre tower as though he had been royalty. All the reception-rooms and more than half the bedrooms were permanently shuttered up, and there was a portly and very dignified housekeeper, who rattled her keys at her chatelaine, and went through all the unused apartments daily, followed by a meek phalanx of housemaids, to see that all the rooms were well-aired and well kept in order, so that at any ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... large wood fire crackled, which the elder lady seemed much to enjoy as she rubbed her hands one over another on her knee, and spoke in a low, purring tone. The younger occupant of the room was a girl about twenty years of age; she was fair and fragile-looking compared with her portly companion, who was rather florid ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... tremendous thrust at his visionary opponent and narrowly escaped transfixing the comely person of a young lady who at this very moment entered the room, with signs of haste and alarm. Behind her, in the dimly-lighted passage, appeared the portly figure of an elderly dame, who was proclaimed, by the bunch of keys which hung at her girdle, to be the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... a live thing between them. Hilary whirled in a kaleidoscope of emotion. Was this wasted, tortured being the portly, dignified President of the United States who had bade him Godspeed at the start of his tremendous journey five years before? His pitying eyes searched the lineaments of the poor wretch. There was no doubt of it now; it was ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... been brought from the great London and Northwestern Railway, locally known as "The Ell-nen-doubleyou." In these remote railway circles the talk is as exclusively of matters of the four-foot way as in Crewe or Derby. There is an inspector of traffic, whose portly presence now graces Carlisle Station, who left the P.P.R. in these sad days of amalgamation, because he could not endure to see so many "Sou'west" waggons passing over the sacred metals of the P.P.R. permanent way. From his youth he had been ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... like my mother, who has received only one letter from you since your departure. No, I did not come up on purpose to see you; but on quite a different account. You must know that the corporation of our town have lately elected a new mayor, a person of many qualifications—big and portly, with a voice like Boanerges; a religious man, the possessor of an immense pew; loyal, so much so that I once heard him say that he would at any time go three miles to hear any one sing 'God save the King'; moreover, a ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... at once asserted itself, and she laughed as she saw in fancy the portly little Frenchman, with his round, ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... by the appearance of the said Mr. John Morgeson, who darkened the threshold of the kitchen door, but advanced no further. I looked at him with curiosity; if he were mad, he might be interesting. He was a large, portly man, over sixty, with splendid black hair slightly grizzled, a prominent nose, and fair complexion. I did not like him, and determined not to ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... mind. She felt that she had taken a righteous and patriotic stand, and it pleased her to think that she was taking an active part in defending the institutions of the country. She chatted eagerly as she walked through the corridors with Mr. Lyons, who, portly and imposing, acted as escort to her and Mrs. Earle, and invited them to luncheon at a hotel restaurant. Excitement had given her more color than usual, to which her mourning acted as a foil, and she looked her best. Lyons was proud of being in ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... literature, and to his last days read the Greek classics in the original. A rare scholar, a lover of books, his tastes were eminently domestic; he was, from his nature, much secluded from the busy world around him. Nearly six feet high, rather portly and dignified, as is shown by his portrait, taken when he was about sixty years of age—he was kind and obliging to all, and emphatically a true Virginia gentleman of the old school. His sympathies during the War of Secession, were strongly in favor of the Union cause, the happy termination of which ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... I went from Dover, and in the steamer there was the most infernally pretty girl. Black, mischievous eyes, with the devil's light in them; hair curly, crispy, frisky, luxuriant, all tossing over her head and shoulders, and an awfully enticing manner. A portly old bloke was with her—her father, I afterward learned. Somehow my hat blew off. She laughed. I laughed. Our eyes met. I made a merry remark. She laughed again; and there we were, introduced. She ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... The very way in which people enter the room is a revelation of character. Mr. King, who was put in good humor by falling on his feet, as it were, in such agreeable company, amused himself by studying the guests as they entered. There was the portly, florid man, who "swelled" in, patronizing the entire room, followed by a meek little wife and three timid children. There was the broad, dowager woman, preceded by a meek, shrinking little man, whose whole appearance was an apology. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Queen said most kindly to the Premier's wife, "I know you are not very strong yet, Lady——; so I beg you will sit down. And, when the Prince comes in, Lady D—— shall stand in front of you." This device of screening a breach of etiquette by hiding it behind the portly figure of a British Matron always struck me ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... the German says when he has drunk a keg of beer. Literature has not changed you, granny. You still remain the good, tall, portly, elderly woman. May all the numberless gods grant you their blessings ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... gold-digging, and at that he was the veriest duffer alive. It was pitiful to see the little canvas bag, with his name printed across it, lying placid and empty upon the shelf at Woburn's store, while all the other bags were increasing daily, and some had assumed quite a portly rotundity of form, for the weeks were slipping by, and it was almost time for the gold-train to start off for Ballarat. We reckoned that the amount which we had stored at the time represented the greatest sum which had ever ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... portly Irving, the Irving with the bright eyes and kindly smile which we have learned to associate with the author of "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," that waited for Rebecca Gratz in the drawing room of her father's home about ten years later. Since the death of Matilda Hoffman, ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... frequently to a lady who was seated on a sofa, and continually addressed him, Coningsby recognised his grandfather. Lord Monmouth was somewhat balder than four years ago, when he had come down to Montem, and a little more portly perhaps; but otherwise unchanged. Lord Monmouth never condescended to the artifices of the toilet, and, indeed, notwithstanding his life of excess, had little need of them. Nature had done much for him, and the slow progress of decay was carried ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... Amand[96], where the abbess took the pastoral ring from off his finger, replacing it by another of plain gold; and thence the bearers proceeded to the cathedral. These duties could not be very agreeable to portly, short-winded, well-fed dignitaries; and consequently the worthy canons were often inclined to shrink from the task. In the case of the funeral of Archbishop d'Aubigny, in 1719, they contented themselves with ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... 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 "Pour moi Corot est le plou ...," and then, ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Doubtless in Eden thou didst blush as bright As these, thy puny brethren; and thy breath Sweetened the fragrance of her spicy air; But now thou seemest like a bankrupt beau, Stripped of his gaudy hues and essences, And growing portly in his sober garments. ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... portly, red-faced young man, with a high-pitched voice. He throve on scandal, and gossiped like a housekeeper. Miss Abingdon liked and thoroughly approved him; his views were sound, his opinions orthodox, and he always ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... were kept waiting for some time, and were seated on the verandah when Mr. Sandbrook, the portly broker, merchant, and shipping agent, came to them. Finn was lying stretched at his full great length on the cedar-wood planks of the verandah, fore-legs far out before him, head carried high, his big, dark eyes fixed lovingly on the Master's face. Mr. Sandbrook was a good-natured, kindly ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... took the trick and gathered it up in silence. He was a portly, antique gentleman, with a fine taste for scandal in its proper place, but disliked conversation during ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... cousins arrived at a field where Humfrey's portly shorthorns were coming forth after their milking, under the pilotage of an old white-headed man, bent nearly double, uncovering his head as the squire touched his hat in ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... opposite. In this encounter two members of our battery were wounded. There was great rejoicing among the people to see us back again and to be once more free from Northern soldiers. As the troops were passing through Newtown a very portly old lady came running out on her porch, and, spreading her arms wide, called out, "All of you run here ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... for the coffee?" It was Mrs. Walters who interrupted the flow of Mrs. Dean's eloquence. She was portly and inclined to brevity, which made her a good ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... gentleman if he would send in his name. Whereupon Tom handed in his card, and, in a few minutes a rakish-looking stable boy came round after his horse, and the butler appeared with his master's compliments, and a request that he would step into the breakfast-room. Tom followed this portly personage through the large handsome hall, on the walls of which hung a buff-coat or two and some old-fashioned arms, and large paintings of dead game and fruit—through a drawing room, the furniture of which was all covered up in melancholy cases—into ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... 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, shall ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... already climbed one of the hills where I could get a view inland to Kini Balu, over miles of jungle where no white man has ever been. But I wanted to see a little of this country, from the car-window at least. So I entered the station and interviewed the station master, a portly official of great dignity. He told me, in fair English, that the train on the "main line" had left for that day but that I could take a "local" out into the country for about three miles. This was better than nothing, ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... my dear heart's desire, In finding fault with her too portly pride; The thing which I do most in her admire Is of the world unworthy most envied. For, in those lofty looks is close implied Scorn of base things, disdain of foul dishonor, Threatening rash eyes which gaze on her so ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... portly alderman, In linen suit arrayed, Manipulates the palm-leaf fan And seeks the cooling shade; And he perspires who not in vain Suggests his funny squibs, By poking his unwelcome cane In ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... the tea-table, those two worthies taking that duty in turn; but this evening, strange to say, whether in honour of my arrival or on account of some other weighty motive, the seat of honour at the end of the table was filled by the portly form of the head of ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... veritable battalion of aid. The hotel proprietor, the negro waiter, and several others dashed upstairs, followed shortly by a portly policeman, ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... was soon made. Our portly dame proved to be a Virginian, who still cherished a true Virginian ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... who, half sceptic, half afraid of wrong, Shall walk our streets, and mark the passing throng; The brawny oaf in mould herculean cast, The pigmy statesman trembling in his blast, The cumb'rous citizen of portly paunch, Unwont to soar beyond the smoaking haunch; The meagre bard behind the moving tun, His shadow seeming lengthen'd by the sun; Who forms scarce visible shall thus descry, Like flitting clouds athwart the mental sky; From giant bodies then bare ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... They were exemplary members of the church, and brought up their children with a great deal of care. They were in every respect dissimilar. He was tall, thin, and dark-complexioned; she was almost short, very fair, and portly in appearance. Mr. Meeker was a kind-hearted, generous, unambitious man, who loved his home and his children, and rejoiced when he could see every body happy around him. He was neither close nor calculating. With a full share of natural ability, he did not turn his talents to accumulation, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... hearing Caryl say he lived in a big brown house that had lots of flowers in the windows. But where upon the face of the earth the house was situated, Viny knew no more than a bird. However, she must get him, so she dashed blindly on, turning the first corner to run headlong into the arms of a portly old lady who was placidly enjoying the fresh air and sunshine at the same time that she ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... opinions) man is not always at his noblest; and the man from Honolulu had himself been drinking—drinking, we may charitably fancy, to excess. It was to your "Dear Brother, the Reverend H. B. Gage," that you chose to communicate the sickening story; and the blue ribbon which adorns your portly bosom forbids me to allow you the extenuating plea that you were drunk when it was done. Your "dear brother"—a brother indeed—made haste to deliver up your letter (as a means of grace, perhaps) to the religious papers; where, after many months, I found ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stern sheets, arose, like an angry ghost, the portly figure of Lucy Passmore, and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... old Judge Brown was wiping his eyes, and portly Doctor Haverhill was adding to the general din of applause by pounding on the floor with his gold-headed cane. The chairman rose to announce the last speaker on the programme, but Phil did not wait for anything more. He had seen Mary pick up the coat which she had left hanging on the chair ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... 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
... piled up to the beams—skins of the smooth beaver, the delicate otter, black and silver fox, so rich to the eye and silky to the touch that the proudest beauties longed for their possession; sealskins to trim the gowns of portly burgomasters, and ermine to adorn the robes of nobles and kings. The spoils of the wolf, bear, and buffalo, worked to the softness of cloth by the hands of Indian women, were stored for winter wear and to fill the sledges with warmth and comfort ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... of a man as he stood there beside his valise. Portly, erect, handsomely dressed, and with something unusually winning in his brown mustache and blue eyes, something scholarly suggested by the pinch-nose glasses, something strong in the repose of the head. He smiled as he saw how unchanged was the grouping of the old ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... Pollock and his wife at the Rectory. There we spent two easy days, and I heard no more of Merivale till three weeks ago when he asked me to meet Thompson just before Christmas. . . . Have you seen Merivale's History of Rome, beginning with the Empire? Two portly volumes are out, and are approved of by Scholars, I believe. I have not read them, not having money to buy, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... 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 inferior ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... Superintendent. I thought him the most impressive looking man I had ever seen. He overpowered me; in his presence I never felt at ease. He was a big man, and looked bigger than he was; good-looking too; ruddy, portly, well-dressed and formal. An embodiment of commercial energy and dignity. In his face gravity, keenness, and good health were blended. Soon after I joined his staff he left the Caledonian to become General Manager of Young's Paraffin Oil Company, and subsequently its Managing Director. ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... the corner by the door, there stood a portly barrel; and let him turn them where he might, it was always to the barrel that his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Nay," said the portly wife of a merchant, "begging your pardon, this may be a fat instead of a lean sorrow. Leaves the ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Monkbarns division by the gee-hupping of the postilion, as the post-chaise lumbered up behind him. In this vehicle were pent up, first, the stately figure of Mr. Oldbuck himself; secondly, the scarce less portly person of the Reverend Mr. Blattergowl, minister of Trotcosey, the parish in which Monkbarns and Knockwinnock were both situated. The reverend gentleman was equipped in a buzz wig, upon the top of which was an equilateral cocked hat. This ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... woman in a tan-colored linen duster came slowly down the deck, a camp-stool in either hand. Her portly advance was intercepted by ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Rector, when that portly consoler called on him. "It's Providence, is it? Well, aw I say is, that if that's th' ways o' Providence, th' less notice Providence ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Epeira fasciata is the handsomest of the Spiders of the South. On her fat belly, a mighty silk-warehouse nearly as large as a hazel-nut, are alternate yellow, black and silver sashes, to which she owes her epithet of Banded. Around that portly abdomen, the eight long legs, with their dark- and pale-brown rings, radiate ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... number of these scrolls had Been thrown aside after one of the grand spectacles at Astley's Amphitheatre, and remained amongst other lumber in the property-room, until the late destructive fire which occurred there. On that night, the wife of one of the stage-assistants—a woman of portly dimensions—was aroused from her bed by the alarm of fire, and in her confusion, being unable to find her proper habiliments, laid hold of one of these scrolls, and wrapping it around her, hastily rushed into the street, and presented to the astonished spectators an extensive back view, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... a tall and portly person, of a somewhat pompous and overbearing demeanour; not much over fifty, but looking considerably older. He had a high shining head, from which the hair had mostly departed, what little still remained being of a grizzled auburn, prominent pale blue eyes with heavy eyelids and ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... you would never have taken this portly, rubicund, iron-gray, bushy-browed gentleman for a statesman. But a statesman he was for all that, and the Emperor and Germany miss him sorely. I would have taken him for a Boer Dopper or an English ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... evening 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 ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... my mother say they sold slaves on what they called an auction block. Jest like if a slave had any portly fine looking children they'd sell them chillun jest like selling cattle. I didn't see this, ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... grandfather's father," said Antony, pointing to a portly gentleman, with lightly powdered hair and a blue riding-coat, painted at the end of the eighteenth century. "It was his eldest son, who had no sons, and left the place to his daughter, who ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... caught a glimpse of a white beard and a portly black suit, of a black bonnet and a dolman that glittered with jet, ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... her face was like tanned leather, her skin loose and shriveled; a handful of gray hair grew on the top of her head, and was twisted up with a silver pin. Brigitta was also of a goodly age, but younger than Carlotta, fat and portly, and round as a barrel. She was pitted by the small-pox, and had but one eye; but, being a widow, and well-to-do in the world, is not without certain pretensions. She wears a yellow petticoat and a jacket trimmed with black lace. In her hair, black and frizzly as a negro's, a ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... and fitting. The wheels that roll on patent axles without rattling; the body that hangs so well on its springs, yielding to every motion, yet proof against every shock. The ruddy faces gaping out of the windows; sometimes of a portly old citizen, sometimes of a voluminous dowager, and sometimes of a fine fresh hoyden, just from boarding school. And then the dickeys loaded with well-dressed servants, beef-fed and bluff; looking down from their heights ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... wouldn't," broke in Barney. "Don't be a fool, Jerry, this man is no detective," and Barney fastened the star to the vest which encircled the portly form of ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... Father Mathew was that of a man of portly figure, rather under than above the middle height, with a handsome, pleasant face. He had a fine powerful voice, which could be heard at the furthest extremity of his gatherings, which often numbered several thousands. As he gave out the words of the pledge ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... there was no time to say more, for at this moment the portly figure and the great face of Dr. Boomer, president of Plutoria University, loomed upon them. And with him came a great burst of conversation that blew all previous topics into fragments. He was introduced to the ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... in our party are a dapper Frenchman, who is in business at Manchester, and a portly Londoner, both of whom are seeing Ireland for the first time. The Frenchman does not grumble at the weather, for he says that in Manchester it rains twice a day all the year round, save during the winter, when it commonly ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... in front of the World newspaper office, which was a supporter of the rebels. It was a crisis when a single spark might kindle a fire that only could be put out by bloodshed. At that moment a man stepped out upon the balcony of the City Hall,—a tall, portly man, whose mighty voice was heard above the tumult of the crowd of angry men. There was stillness, and then, solemnly and slowly, the voice cried, "Fellow-citizens,—Clouds and darkness are round Him! His pavilion is on the dark waters, and thick clouds of the skies! ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... speak my mind in a cavalier manner, and as, according to the Spectator, talking to a friend is no more than thinking aloud, entre nous, his Corsican majesty has been scurvily treated by a certain administration. Be that as it will, he is a personage of a very portly appearance, and is quite master of the bienseance. Besides, they will find it their interest to have recourse again to his alliance; and in that case some of us may expect to profit by his restoration. But ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... like a bridal bell; Gladness and joy leaped up at every swell; And love was deeper, warmer, for the tone That clasped the heart like an enchanted zone. A youth was there more comely than the rest, One who could turn a furrow with the best, Compete for manly strength and portly air, Or wield a scythe with any reaper there. The spirit of her voice had moved above The waters of his soul, and waked his song ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... now five mounted men and a trudger afoot. The cavalier who had laughed, a portly, genial person with a bold and merry eye, laughed again. "Well met, Don Cristoval. Well met, Admiral! I looked to find you presently! You sailed out of port at sunrise and I two hours later with a swifter ship and ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... who lived at Bass Cove, where he shot wild ducks, took some to town for sale, and attracted the attention of a portly gentleman fond of shooting. This gentleman went duck shooting with Joe, and their adventures were more amusing to the boy than ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... down among those wrapped-up, ghostly chairs and tables and cabinets and statues many times before Joe arrived with the minister—and he was a Methodist, McCabe by name. You should have seen Mrs. Ball's look as he advanced his portly form and round face with its shaven upper lip into the drawing-room. She tried to be cordial, but she couldn't—her mind was on Anita, and the horror that would fill her when she discovered that she was ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... these visitors to the old room and its furniture. Mr Rothwell was a tall and rather portly man with a pleasant countenance, a little flushed, indicating a somewhat free indulgence in what is certainly miscalled "good living." The cast of his features was that of a person easy-going, good-tempered, and ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... wishes for her acceptance of any of them; until, at length, he introduced to her one Mr. Bruce, a wealthy cloth-merchant from Glasgow. He was a man of about fifty years of age, of a well-favored and portly presence, and accounted a sure and somewhat sour follower of Mr. Comyn's favorite creed. Barbara had frequently heard her father speak highly of his Glasgow friend, but as no warning had prepared her, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... himself was a man of sixty, hale and hearty, with a rosy face and white whiskers. He was a broad-shouldered man, inclining to be portly, and he was currently accepted as a man of an indomitable will. There was no particular reason for the popular belief in his determination apart from the fact that it was a favourite boast of his that nothing ever got him down. On all occasions ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... tremendous thing for me, this dinner. The portly duenna on my left had a round eye and an irritated, parrot-like profile, crowned by a high comb, a head shaded by black lace. I dared hardly lift my eyes to the dark and radiant presence facing me across a table furniture that was ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... their protectors by neglecting to get out of the way in time, with the result that at least two men were severely bruised by falling over them—the case of Uncle Dad Simms being a particularly sad one. He collided head-on with the portly Mrs. Loop, and failing to budge her, suffered the temporary loss of a full set of teeth and nearly twenty minutes of consciousness. Mr. Squires went on to say that the only thing that saved Mr. Simms from being run over and killed by the fire-engine was the fact that the latter was ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... was over and the brandy had been set before them, Metenier studied his glass thoughtfully and glanced at the two portly men who had entered the brown dining room and sat some tables away. From the snatches of conversation the three gathered that one was a literary critic and the other a publisher. They were discussing a thrilling detective ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak
... interior from the earliest times. In the rainy season the whole site is flooded, and only the upper stories are habitable. Cock-fighting seems to be the chief amusement. We breakfasted with the governor, a portly gentleman who kept a little dry-goods store. His excellency, without waiting for a formal introduction, and with a cordiality and courtesy almost confined to the Latin nations, received us into his own house, and honored us with a seat at his private table, spread with the choicest ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... slipped the bolt and got out on deck. From the appearance of the sky I judged that it was only half an hour since I had found myself in the corridor. It was light enough to make out things fairly well, and now I could discern on the bridge the portly form of Holgate struck with this light. The figure of a man was visible a little in front of me by the chart-house. I heard Holgate's voice raised wheezily in orders, and the replies of the men came back to me ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... contrast to the active, impatient commander of the vessel. That portly individual, having just finished a cigar which the first lieutenant had presented to him on his arrival on board, threw the fag end of it into the sea, and proceeded leisurely to fill a large-headed German pipe, which was the constant companion ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... in the open air, and groaning beneath viands, nutritious and succulent. What swain or yokel had not a meed of praise for the monarch when he beheld this burden of good cheer, and, at the end of each board, elevated a little and garlanded with roses, a rotund and portly cask of wine, with ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... all their might for their own personal ends. And exceedingly few members of any Government whatsoever would have the courage to tell a well-dressed and arrogant woman to go to the devil, even when that answer happened to be the sole correct answer to an impertinence. Wellington merely damned the portly darlings, but then Wellington, though preposterous as a ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... years he had lived abroad—not in any settled place of residence: they would travel about, and remain a year or two in one place, a year or two in another, as the whim suited them. A respectable, portly man, of quiet and gentlemanly manners, looking as little like one who need be afraid of the laws of his own land as can be. Neither is it said or insinuated that he was afraid of them. A gentleman who knew him had told, many years before, in answer to a doubt, that Crosby was as free to go ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... realize how much of combined deference and authority the phrase is capable of. Mr. Biggar, having in his early Parliamentary days defied the Chair and affronted the sensibilities of the House, alike in the matter of dress and deportment, developed into a portly gentleman of almost smug appearance, a terror to new members. Woe to any who in his ignorance passed between the Chair and the member addressing it; who walked in from a division with his hat on; or who stood an inch ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... now a pauperized gourmand, who, in consideration of his coarse wit and "gentlemen's stories," was permitted to have the run of his teeth at Crompton. This Falstaff to the Squire's Prince Hal was a rotund and portly man, like his great prototype, but singularly handsome. His smile was winning yet, and, in spite of his load of years and fat, he still considered himself agreeable to ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... studio, in sweet and silent communion. They heard rapping at Torpenhow's door. 'That's some ruffian come up for a drink,' said Torpenhow; and he raised his voice cheerily. There entered no one more ruffianly than a portly middle-aged gentleman in a satin-faced frockcoat. His lips were parted and pale, and there were deep pouches ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling |
