"Rotundity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... material vision of the spoil absorbed all his faculties. A great vision! He seemed to see it. A few small canvas bags tied up with thin cord, their distended rotundity showing the inside pressure of the disk-like forms of coins—gold, solid, heavy, eminently portable. Perhaps steel cash-boxes with a chased design, on the covers; or perhaps a black and brass box with a handle on the top, and full of goodness knows what. Bank notes? Why not? ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... went to bed; and the two Gaudrons—the husband, like some heavy animal and almost bursting his brown jacket at the slightest movement, the wife, an enormous woman, whose figure indicated evident signs of an approaching maternity and whose stiff violet colored skirt still more increased her rotundity. Coupeau explained that they were not to wait for My-Boots; his comrade would join the party on the Route ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... solicitor, an elderly man, inclined to rotundity, was introduced, and, taking his position before the fireplace, opened the proceedings with an expression of regret as to the circumstances which had brought ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... transmitted by the lecturer. The fact is worth noting that from 1849 to 1857, arguments on the roundness or flatness of the earth did itinerate. I have {89} no doubt they did much good: for very few persons have any distinct idea of the evidence for the rotundity of the earth. The Blackburn Standard and Preston Guardian (Dec. 12 and 16, 1849) unite in stating that the lecturer ran away from his second lecture at Burnley, having been rather too hard pressed at the end of his first lecture to explain why the large hull ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... desire eloquence or rotundity," I reply. "Furthermore, I avoid them." The vast majority of Spanish purists are convinced that the only possible rhetoric is the rhetoric of the major key. This, for example, is the rhetoric of Castelar and Costa, the rhetoric which Ricardo Leon and Salvador Rueda manipulate today, ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... him, for having been compelled to seek consolation for disappointment by indulging in strong drinks, he never completely loses the habit which tells, of course, both upon his dress and temper. Though success, by bringing the pleasures of the table within his reach, has increased the rotundity of his figure, it has never been able to make his collars snowy or his conversation refined. He is often found upon the Committees of new Clubs which start with a blare of journalistic trumpets upon a chequered existence, only to perish in contempt a few years afterwards. But while they last he attends ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 12, 1890 • Various
... half bad-looking!' Brunettes are, of course, in the majority; and every third or fourth girl has beautiful brown eyes and an abundance of coarsish hair—which, by the way, she probably dresses in an untidy knob, all corners and no rotundity. ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... thought Pope's verse incomparably ahead of Homer and Shakspere. One of the prevalent objections, in the days of Columbus was, the learn'd men boldly asserted that if a ship should reach India she would never get back again, because the rotundity of the globe would present a kind of mountain, up which it would be impossible to sail even with the most ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... me he would have developed a little more soul, and a little less stomach - but what of it? -" with a graceful shrug. "For the good of his country it is written that he shall acquire weight and stolidity, instead of an ideal soul, and for the benefit of posterity I sentenced him to speedy rotundity, and dull respectability, and the begetting of future bankers. He will presently marry some one named Alice or Annie, and invite me to the first christening in ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... downright practical business and the realities of political strife, over the torpid atmosphere of a study or a school. Cicero, long after, had the same passion for numerositas, and the full, pompous rotundity of cadence. But in Cicero, all habits and all faculties were nursed by the daily practice of life and its impassioned realities, in the forum or in the senate. What is the consequence? Why this—that, whereas in the most laboured performance of Isocrates (which cost him, I think, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... the story of Columbus. At this time he was but a penniless mendicant travelling on foot from court to court, seeking patronage to enable him to prove the truth which his great mind had grasped, the rotundity of the earth. The subject had given him no rest for eighteen years. He had discussed it before wise men in council assembled; he had pleaded with royalty in vain; at the court of Isabella, for the first time, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... Gad's Hill. T. Stothard, R.A. The figure has not the fleshy rotundity of the Falstaff of Shakspeare; he is like a half-stuffed actor in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... Verkimier, with a look of surprise which was greatly intensified by the rotundity of the blue spectacles. "Vell, I don't feel to vant safing ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... The modus operandi is understood, and the facts have been known some thirty, some a hundred, some several thousand years. Among advanced thinkers psychic science is no more a debatable question than the rotundity of the earth or the principles ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... recall the fornyrdhalag of the Elder Edda. Soon after "Svea" followed, in 1812, "The Priestly Consecration," the occasion of which was the poet's own ordination. Here the oratorical note and a certain clerical rotundity of utterance come very near spoiling the melody. "At the Jubilee in Lund" (1817) is very much in the same strain, and begins with the statement ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... No! Aramis. But, nowadays, what sort of a plank should we want, my friend! I, in particular." And the Seigneur de Bracieux cast a proud glance over his colossal rotundity, with a loud laugh. "And do you mean seriously to say you are not tired of Belle-Isle also a little, and that you would not prefer the comforts of your dwelling—of your espiscopal palace, at Vannes? ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... for the first time in my life, the sun to the northward, and moving through the heavens from right to left, instead of from left to right. No one doubts that the earth is round; yet these conspicuous and actual proofs of its rotundity always amuse the fancy, and frequently interest the judgment, almost as much as if they were unexpected. The gradual rise, night after night, of new stars and new constellations, belongs to a still higher ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... You cat[)a]r[)a]cts and hurricanoes, spout, Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! and thou, all-shaking thunder, Strike flat the thick rotundity ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... the Mauser, the Lebel, and the Lee-Metford. Behind them walked Cecil Brown, listless, cynical, self-contained. The fat clergyman puffed slowly up the bank, with many gasping witticisms at his own defects. "I'm one of those men who carry everything before them," said he, glancing ruefully at his rotundity, and chuckling wheezily at his own little joke. Last of all came Headingly, slight and tall, with the student stoop about his shoulders, and Fardet, the good-natured, ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... at him with pity, and glanced for a moment at his neighbor's red face, his short, thick neck, his "corporation," as Chenet called it to himself, that hung down between two flaccid, fat legs, and his apoplectic rotundity of the old, flabby official, and, lifting the white Panama hat which he wore, from his head, he said, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... for myself and a portly dogana-official who was playing with his little son—trying to amuse him by elephantine gambols on the sand, regardless of his uniform and manly dignity. Notwithstanding his rotundity, he was an active and resourceful parent, and enjoyed himself vastly; the boy pretending, as polite children sometimes do, to enter into the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... day, we end, like the Baron, by thinking ourselves but little altered, and still youthful, when others see that our head is covered with chinchilla, our forehead scarred with circumflex accents, our stomach assuming the rotundity of a pumpkin. So these rooms, always blazing in Betty's eyes with the Bengal fire of Imperial victory, were to her ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... fault of Mr. Gosse's that with all his diligence he should fail to give a complete and striking portrait of his man, or to make more of what he describes as his 'smiling, faultless rotundity.' As he puts it: 'There were no salient points about Congreve's character,' so that 'no vagaries, no escapades place him in a ludicrous or in a human light,' and 'he passes through the literary life of his time as if in felt slippers, noiseless, unupbraiding, without personal ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... won't even consider of the business?" said Mr. John Brown, buttoning his surtout over the snug rotundity of his person and drawing on his gloves. "You positively refuse to let me have this crazy old house, and the land under and adjoining, at the ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... serviceable suit of sails; Grant Sanderson's masts still stood, and might have wondered at themselves. "I haven't the heart to tap them," Captain Wicks used to observe, as he squinted up their height or patted their rotundity; and "as rotten as our foremast" was an accepted metaphor in the ship's company. The sequel rather suggests it may have been sounder than was thought; but no one knew for certain, just as no one except the captain appreciated the dangers of the cruise. The ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... had to harmonize the entire universe, visible as well as invisible. Not science is this, but an immediate vision of the true, always prophetic, which observes the impress of spirit everywhere upon the realm of matter. The old Greek sages seem to have known not merely of the rotundity of the Earth, but also of its movement round the Sun and upon its own axis, both movements being circular, returns, which image mind. Did they get their knowledge from Egypt or Chaldea? Questionable; if they looked inwardly deep enough, ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... it again!" broke in Will Hendry, usually called Fatty by his chums because of his rotundity. Fatty was extremely good-natured, and as a consequence ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... fortunate; for we must acknowledge, that in our occasional rambles on the Continent, we never saw beauty in a German visage. The rotundity of the countenance, the coarse colours, the stunted nose, and the thick lip, which constitute the general mould of the native physiognomy, are to us the very antipodes of beauty. Dress, diamonds, rouge, and lively manners, may go far, and the ball-room may help the deception; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... of that came another thought. I looked at the half-dozen little figures that were following me. Then, in a flash, I perceived that all had the same form of costume, the same soft hairless visage, and the same girlish rotundity of limb. It may seem strange, perhaps, that I had not noticed this before. But everything was so strange. Now, I saw the fact plainly enough. In costume, and in all the differences of texture and bearing that now mark off the ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... sure of that," she said. "We may yet invent a telescope which shall curve its reflected rays over the rotundity of the earth and above the highest icebergs, so that you and I may sit here and look at the waters of the pole gently splashing around ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... which yet was capable of recalling a number of very different, but all pertinent, recollections, as old armour, the precious metals hidden in the ore, &c. Don Quixote's leanness and featureliness are happy exponents of the excess of the formative or imaginative in him, contrasted with Sancho's plump rotundity, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... us, "These balls were made by the Jenoun, who on occasion of quarrels, pelted one another with them. A traveller was once killed with some of these balls during the night, although a friend of the Jenoun." In a former period, I imagine the action of water produced these specimens of stony rotundity, for they were embedded in a deep wady. On leaving this valley, I had also something else to relieve me from the gloom of this day's march. On mounting a small ridge of rock, abrupt, and full of sharp stones, I was pitched off in a summerset style from the back of the camel, and if I had not ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... nowadays, what sort of a plank should we want, my friend! I, in particular." And the Seigneur de Bracieux cast a profound glance over his colossal rotundity with a loud laugh. "And do you mean seriously to say you are not tired of Belle-Isle a little, and that you would not prefer the comforts of your dwelling—of your episcopal palace, ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... deep in nature. The peevish mouth and the fallen eye of the plaice, the helpless rotundity of the sunfish, the mournful gape and rolling glance of the goldfish, the furious and ineffective mien of the barndoor fowl, the wild grotesqueness of the babyroussa and the wart-hog, the crafty solemn eye of the parrot,—if such things as these do not testify to a sense of humour in ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... morning between ten and eleven the door bell rang, and in a moment Jenny Lincoln, whose father's house was just opposite, came tripping into the parlor. She had lost in a measure that rotundity of person so offensive to her mother, and it seemed to Mary that there was a thoughtful expression on her face never seen there before, but in all other respects, she was ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... Bungay to the public, we took over the English agency of certain American specialties. To this was presently added our exploitation of Moggs' Domestic Soap, and so he took up the Domestic Convenience Campaign that, coupled with his equatorial rotundity and a certain resolute convexity in his bearings won my ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... nationality of the different persons, and in wondering if the Canadians did not make it a matter of conscientious loyalty to out-English the English even in the matter of pale-ale and sherry, and in rotundity of person and freshness of face, just as they emulated them in the cut of their clothes and whiskers. Must they found even their health upon the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... shelter. For two hours the downpour lasted, but it cooled the air and rendered the return journey a little more supportable; and when we arrived at the house, we also arrived at the decision that never again to a picnic, as far as we were concerned, should thinness and rotundity go ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... and La Rochefoucauld, and pious Lally, and Lafayette, whom Mirabeau calls Grandison Cromwell, and the Viscount Mirabeau, called Barrel Mirabeau, on account of his rotundity, and the quantity of strong liquor he contains. Among the clergy is the Abbe Maury, who does not want for audacity, and the Cure Gregoire who shall be a bishop, and Talleyrand-Pericord, his reverence of Autun, with sardonic grimness, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... Saxon; a still glowing brand amid the ashes of the Heptarchy hearthstone; who had a song, The Marigolds, which he would troll out for you anywhere, on any occasion. To have so near to the metropolis one from the centre of the venerable rotundity of the country, was rare. Victor exclaimed 'Come!' in ravishment over the picturesqueness of a neighbour carrying imagination away to the founts of England; and his look at Nataly proposed. Her countenance was inapprehensive. He perceived resistance, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sphere in one hand, the learned professor began fingering it with the other, like Columbus illustrating the rotundity of the globe before the ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... through an opera-glass,—which would tie the ends of the earth together and toss it over shoulder like a peddler's bundle, to "swop" quaint curiosities, inspiring relics, and solemn symbols, for British prints or American pig-iron. Puck us no Pucks, De Sauty, nor constrict our planet's rotundity with any forty-minute girdle; for in these days of inflating crinoline and ever-increasing circumference of hooped skirts, it becomes us to leave our Mother Earth at least in the fashion, nor strive to reduce her to such unmodish dimensions ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... nutritive perversion. With the loss of sexual ardor, there is also apathy of mind, loss of manliness, and the victim becomes cold, dispassionate, and treacherous, devoid of any admiration or love for the opposite sex. He acquires rotundity of person, the face is fat, smooth, often beardless, and ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... resemblance between them, grew down over a receding chin, being forced thereto by the bulbous overhang of the nose. He had rufous side-whiskers, clipped moderately close, and carroty hair mixed with gray. His erect shoulders and straight back were a little out of keeping with the rotundity of his figure in other respects; but the combination, hinting, as it did, of affairs both gastronomic and martial, taken with a manner at once dignified, formal, and suave, constituted the most intensely respectable appearance I ever saw. To the ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... discerned towards the north the Llanos of Calabozo bounding the horizon. We had been so long accustomed to the aspect of forests, that this view made a powerful impression on us. The steppes after sunset assume a tint of greenish gray. The visual ray being intercepted only by the rotundity of the earth, the stars seemed to rise as from the bosom of the ocean, and the most experienced mariner would have fancied himself placed on a projecting cape of a rocky coast. Our host was a Frenchman who lived amidst his numerous herds. Though ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... it was, he turned promptly, and encountered a stout, heavy man, handsomely dressed, but for a massive gold chain which passed across his bosom into his vest pocket, and drooped in glittering lengths far down the rotundity of his capacious person, and a large diamond that blazed on his plaited shirt bosom. From the chain and the diamond, Hepworth's first thought was, that the person must be some Californian or Australian acquaintance, ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... Jacques Dumoulin, who advanced with his hat stuck on one side, with rubicund nose and sparkling eye, dressed in a loose coat, which displayed the rotundity of his abdomen. His hands, one of which held a huge cane shouldered like a musket, were plunged into the vast pockets of his ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... to its work. With cylinders heating, and her mixture therefore going snappily as a natural result, she too had taken on a slight accession of speed. Two meteors, flung from space across the earth's rotundity, could scarcely have been more exciting than these liberated chariots ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... well toe did not entitle him to gastronomic consideration. Topeka, who had arrived at an age where little girls, in the first subconscious attempt at adornment, know no keener delight than plastering their heads with a wet hairbrush, till they present an appearance of slippery rotundity equalled only by a peeled onion, put down the brush with guilty haste ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... two-wheeled carts, each surmounted by a well-armed guard, and drawn by six strong horses with harness stout as cannon-leathers. The hostlers stood at the horses' heads, chewing at wisps of barley-straw as though their other fare was scant, which, from their sleek rotundity, was difficult to believe. The stable-boy, with a pot of slush, and a head of hair like a last year's haycock, was hastily greasing a forgotten wheel; while, out of the room where the servants ate, the drivers came stumbling down the ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... dress seemed designed expressly to add to his rotundity. It was one of those queer garments bearing a faint resemblance to a convict's uniform, and the wide stripes of it went round and round his figure like hoops on a barrel. It was so funny that I chuckled again and forgot all about my burning feet ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... Indian will thus eat at a single meal is incredible. He seems to have the power of distending himself for the reception of a quantity that would kill a civilized man. Children in particular become like tightly inflated little balloons after a feast, and as they wear no clothing, the extraordinary rotundity is very obvious, not to say ridiculous. We conclude therefore that unusual powers of gormandizing, being useful, come at last ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... wonderful tale I ween, Of the Glugs of Gosh and their great King Splosh, And Tush, his virtuous Queen. And here is a tale of the crafty Ogs, In their neighbouring land of Podge; Of their sayings and doings and plottings and brewings, And something about Sir Stodge. Wise to profundity, Stout to rotundity, That was ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... and ministrations with daintier mien; but the whole household thrilled with excitement. Could the spluttering spark of life be made to glow? That was the all-absorbing topic for days. Gradually some sort of a human rotundity became manifest, and on the occasion of the bath it was more and more apparent that instead of being impenetrably black the skin-tint was a mingling of pale brown and pink; and as regular nourishment began to be effective the features ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... immovable body inveigled along its course? I will explain it to you. It is by the power of friction; that is to say, the two wheels, or paddles turning diametrically, or at the same moment, on their axioms, and repressing by the rotundity of their motion the action of the menstruum in which the machine floats,—water being, in a philosophical sense, a powerful non-conductor,—it is clear, that in proportion as is the revulsion so is the progression; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... ferns, commercial travellers. There I've hidden them all this time in the hope that somehow they'd disappear, or better still emerge, as indeed they must, if the story's to go on gathering richness and rotundity, destiny and tragedy, as stories should, rolling along with it two, if not three, commercial travellers and a whole grove of aspidistra. "The fronds of the aspidistra only partly concealed the commercial traveller—" Rhododendrons would conceal him utterly, and into the bargain give ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... pleasantry. His mother's and sister's doing, Pere Jerome would explain; they would not permit this apartment—or department—to suffer. Therein, as well as in the parlor, there was odor, but of a more epicurean sort, that explained interestingly the Pere Jerome's rotundity ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... landlord's curiosity, and made him express a desire to see them. And as nothing so pleased the major as to show his animals to every new acquaintance, he doffed his uniform, and putting on his suit of Uxbridge satinet, which rather increased the rotundity of his figure, sallied forth to the stable, and there found old Battle quietly eating hay in the stalls, and the pig fast locked up in his cage. A groom led the limping animal out, and as he hobbled along ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... as our merry ancestors would have called it, a flam, is usually the most ephemeral and evanescent of human devices. Like a boy's soap bubble, it glitters for a brief moment in iridescent rotundity, then ceases to be even a film of air. It is unsubstantial as the tail of Halley's comet. On rare occasions, it is true, its existence is prolonged; many worthy people are beguiled; and some enthusiasts are so effectually hoodwinked ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... did not prosper: it has been surmised that Jonathan's tall, lank, lean figure injured his custom, as people are but too much inclined to judge of the goodness of the ale by the rubicund face and rotundity of the landlord, and therefore inferred that there could be no good beer where mine host was the picture of famine. There certainly is much in appearances in this world; and it appears, that in consequence of Jonathan's cadaverous ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... golf cap, run-over shoes, and trousers of the "serviceable" brand. Dust, clinging to the moisture induced by free exercise, darkened wide areas of his face. "Smoky" carried a baseball bat, and a league ball that advertised itself in the rotundity of his trousers pocket. Haywood stopped and passed the ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... indeed should rather have been named Split-ear, as we shall presently show, was afflicted with an aldermanic rotundity of person, by no means common among his race, and was one, who from his love of ease and naturally indolent disposition, seemed more fitted to take his seat in the council than to lead his warriors to battle. Yet ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... Sec. Sec. to give vent to the double stream of sound. But is he not the victim of some trick—has no other fiddle been substituted for the broken Straduarius? No!—'tis his own well-known fiddle, outside and in—the same delicate proportions, the same elegant neck, and the same swelling rotundity of contour that might have made it a model for the Praxiteles of violins. He placed the instrument against his shoulder and seized the bow. But all of a sudden he paused—a cold perspiration bedewed his face—his limbs could scarcely support him. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... feet with more alacrity than might have been expected of such a fat man, and was adjusting his collar and tie, and smoothing his waistcoat over his rotundity. Malipieri had risen the moment he was free. The detective looked as if nothing had happened out of the common way, and the neatness of his appearance was not in ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... the single exception of the donkey has had the door of the Agricultural Exhibition thrown wide open to it, to enter the lists for prizes or "honorable mention," and for general admiration. A pig, whose legs and eyes have all been absorbed out of sight by an immense rotundity of fat, is often decked with a ribbon, of the Order of the Garter genus, as a reward of merit, or of grace of form and proportions! Turkeys, geese, ducks, and hens of different breeds, strut or waddle off with similar distinctions. As for blood-horses, ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... bodega is picturesque, too, though in a different way. It is a bright and cheerful spot, a huge shed with whitewashed walls and an open roof supported by dark beams; great casks are piled up, impressing you in their vast rotundity with a sort of aldermanic stateliness. The whole place is fragrant with clean, vinous perfumes. Your guide carries a glass and a long filler. You taste wine after wine, in different shades of brown; ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... a gleam of sunshine was sparkling among the dripping boughs under which they were passing. This gleam fell upon a man on horseback who was jogging slowly along, and whom Mr. Gilfil recognized, in spite of diminished rotundity, as Daniel Knott, the coachman who had married the rosy-cheeked Dorcas ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... responsible for the deft manoeuvring. At any rate, he walked beside his big cousin with the air of a successful aide-de- camp. But Monkey, too, seemed flushed with victory, rolling along—her rotundity ever suggested rolling rather than the taking of actual steps—as if she ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... and with a piece of fine glasspaper, slightly oiled, a few rubs backwards and forwards will be necessary. The top of the back part can now be shaved gently down by a small metal plane, a little filing will give the evenness and rotundity required. The same treatment will be necessary for the under part, which in good work is a continuation of the line of the edging of the upper table. A section of the nut in its finished state will ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... patches beside his nose with a purple handkerchief, and put it back into his outside breast pocket with the corners sticking out like attentive ears. He crossed his legs and set on his knee an ankle clothed in a purple silk stocking. On account of his rotundity he was compelled to hold the ankle in place in the firm clutch of his hand. He settled his purple tie with ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... ground is composed of nothing but Alpine gravel, consisting of rolled oval pebbles, on the average about six inches long by four wide—awkward building materials, yet used in ingenious alternation with the bricks in all the lowland Italian fortresses. Besides this universal rotundity, the qualities of stones which rendered them valuable to the lapidary were forced on the painter's attention by the familiar arts of inlaying and mosaic. Hence, in looking at a pebble, his mind was divided between its roundness and its veins; and Leonardo covers ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... and republics the ships necessary to undertake their voyage. While Christopher patiently waited in the antechambers of the Catholic monarchs of Spain, Bartolomeo, map in hand, explained to Henry VII. of England the rotundity of the earth, and the feasibility of traveling to the antipodes. Having failed in his mission to the English king, he passed to France to ask of her what had been refused by Portugal, Spain, Venice, England, and Genoa. While he was there, Columbus, ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... peering into the openings to decipher the contents. While thus engaged, the corpulent courtier's round eyes sparkled brightly and it seemed to the youth as if the countenance of the man, whose comfortable plumpness and smooth rotundity at first appeared like a mirror of the utmost kindness of heart, now had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the National Assembly will by and by, to save time, 'regard as in a state of distraction.' Note lastly that globular Younger Mirabeau; indignant that his elder Brother is among the Commons: it is Viscomte Mirabeau; named oftener Mirabeau Tonneau (Barrel Mirabeau), on account of his rotundity, and the quantities ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... bright-eyed, rubicund-featured gentleman, with a slight disposition to corporeal rotundity—is the second priest. He is a sharp, kindly-humoured gentleman, and does not appear to have suffered in either mind or body by a four years residence in Rome. Mr. Hawkesworth is a practical priest, a good singer, and a hard worker. He resides with Canon ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... over the edge of his tiny car, but for the intervention of a circular rim reaching as high as the breast, and rigged on to the cords of the balloon. The body of the little man was more than proportionately broad, giving to his entire figure a rotundity highly absurd. His feet, of course, could not be seen at all, although a horny substance of suspicious nature was occasionally protruded through a rent in the bottom of the car, or to speak more properly, in the top of the hat. His hands ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Undoubtedly his name was an unfortunate one at the time, but, to judge by the old portraits I showed you, neither of these princes looked capable of such atrocities, and Prince Alldane was described as being the essence of rotundity. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... surmises, and the day's travel, she closed her eyes. And then her enamoured companion more widely opened his, and traced the beautiful features opposite him. The arch of the brows—like a slur in music—the droop of the lashes, the meeting of the lips, and the sweet rotundity of the chin—one by one, and all together, they were adored, till his heart was like a retort full of ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... Perspective-plane, supposed to be perfectly level and to extend from the base line to the horizon. Of this we shall speak further on. In nature it is not really level, but partakes in extended views of the rotundity of the earth, though in small areas such as ponds ...
— The Theory and Practice of Perspective • George Adolphus Storey
... t'ai chi in the Canon of Changes (I ching) no more constituted monism the philosophy of China than did the steam-driven machinery mentioned by Hero of Alexandria constitute the first century B.C. the 'age of steam.' Similarly, to take another example, the idea of the earth's rotundity, though conceived centuries before Ptolemy in the second century, did not become established before the sixteenth century. It was, in fact, from the I ching that the Chinese derived their dualistic (not their monistic) conception ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... that my arm encircled as pretty a waist as ever was clasped by a lover. There was a pleasing rotundity about it, combined with a general symmetry of form and serpentine yieldiness of movement that rendered dancing with such a partner both easy and delightful. My observation at the moment was, that if the face of the modiste bore any sort ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... in the extreme of fashion, and was a regular dandy parson of that day. There also was! Father Magauran, the parish priest, a rosy-faced, jovial little man, with a humorous! twinkle in his blue eye, and an anterior rotundity of person that betokened a moderate relish for the convivialities. Altogether it was a merry meeting; and of the host himself it might be said that he held as conspicuous a place in the mirth as he did in ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. It is an exhaustive treatise, dealing first with the primitive conceptions of beauty—roundness and smoothness, I think they are, according to Burke. It is well said. Rotundity is a patent charm; as for smoothness—the more new wrinkles a woman acquires, the ...
— Options • O. Henry
... fanatic except the fortune which finally attended his lifelong devotion to the most improbable hypothesis of his time. It has been our custom to eulogize his courage and his constancy to the truth; but if he had adopted perpetual motion, instead of the rotundity of the earth, as his dogma, he would have deserved our praises just as much. His sole claim to our admiration is, that in the teeth of all precedent and likelihood, he succeeded by one mistake in making another: because he fancied that by sailing ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... fifteen years younger than her husband and was undeniably rotund of hips and face, the former rotundity increased by her full skirts, the latter accentuated by her style of wearing her hair combed back into a tight knot near the top of her head and held in place by a ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... is where we put the treble, and vice versa. The strings are generally struck with the thumb-nail or with a piece of horn or wood like the ancient plectrum. This produces a harsh metallic sound, without any rotundity. Few New Mexican fiddlers or guitar-players are capable of playing in any time except dancing time, and the character of the baile, funeral and sacred music is the same. The only distinction is the addition of a continuous tremolo to the latter two, which produces the same unpleasant ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... alehouse, through the half-closed windows of which blazed out in ruddy comfort the beams of the hospitable hearth, he knocked hastily at the door. He was admitted by a lady of a certain age, and endowed with a comely rotundity of face ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... inhabited. But about a hundred yards from the gate Desmond saw a basti {block of native huts}, and from one of the huts smoke was issuing. He sauntered up. Before the door, lolling in unstudied dishabille, squatted a bearded, turbaned Mohammedan, whom from his rotundity Desmond guessed to be the khansaman of the ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... discourteous remark with the still more discourteous observation that as a feature of a feast the Egyptian article was to be preferred—because it did not overeat itself, and did keep its mouth shut. However, Mr. Port's obvious rotundity destroyed what little point was to be found in this meagre witticism; and, if it had not, the fact is well-known in Philadelphia that New Yorkers, being descended not from an honorable Quaker ancestry but from successful operations ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... speed, yet the size of the moon's disc was very rapidly expanding as we approached nearer and nearer to it. In the course of a little over half-an-hour we were within ten miles of its surface, which now seemed to fill the whole space below us; and its rotundity was most impressive. The shadows of the mountains and other elevated portions near the terminator[4] were jet black, owing to the absence of an atmosphere; and, seen contrasted with the brilliant lighting of the parts exposed to the full glare ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... calculated to foster the comic genius of his pupil. "He" (Trulliber), wrote that pupil, some thirty years later, "was indeed one of the largest Men you should see, and could have acted the part of Sir John Falstaff without stuffing. Add to this, that the Rotundity of his Belly was considerably increased by the shortness of his Stature, his shadow ascending very near as far in height when he lay on his Back, as when he stood on his Legs. His Voice was loud and hoarse, and his Accents extremely broad; to complete the whole he had ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... full of dark Spots, untrod Mazes, waking Mischiefs, and sleeping Mysteries; and being delineated like the Globes display'd, would discover all the Lines of Wickedness to the Eye at one view: Besides, they fancied some sort of Analogy in the Rotundity of the Figure, with the continued Circular Motion of all Court-Policies, in the stated ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... new and a good friend appeared. Hayley was a mediocre poet, who had for a time obtained distinction above his merits. Afterwards his star had declined, but having an excellent heart, he had not been in the least soured by the downfall of his reputation. He was addicted to a pompous rotundity of style, perhaps he was rather absurd; but he was thoroughly good-natured, very anxious to make himself useful, and devoted to Cowper, to whom, as a poet, he looked up with an admiration unalloyed by any other feeling. Both of them, as it happened, were engaged on Milton, ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... peculiarities of temper and opinion are gradually worn away by promiscuous converse, as angular bodies and uneven surfaces lose their points and asperities by frequent attrition against one another, and approach by degrees to uniform rotundity. The prevalence of fashion, the influence of example, the desire of applause, and the dread of censure, obstruct the natural tendencies of the mind, and check the fancy in its first efforts to break ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... cried a woman, who was availing herself of her peculiar rotundity as a battering-ram to force her way ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... with the incessant commerce of banks, laboratories, chancellories, and houses of business, are the strokes which oar the world forward, they say. And they are dealt by men as smoothly sculptured as the impassive policeman at Ludgate Circus. But you will observe that far from being padded to rotundity his face is stiff from force of will, and lean from the efforts of keeping it so. When his right arm rises, all the force in his veins flows straight from shoulder to finger-tips; not an ounce is diverted into sudden impulses, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... such as occur near great towns. On work-days still wearing the same old hat—I wonder what material it was originally?—tough leather probably—its fibres soaked with mortar, its shine replaced by lime, its shape dented by bricks, its rotundity flattened by timber, stuck about with cow's hair—for a milker leans his head against the animal—sodden with rain, and still the same old hat. The same old hat, that Teniers might have introduced, a regular daub of ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... grandmother, though her admiration was based upon wholly sentimental reasons. Old Mrs. Mitchell might have earned more money in a museum of freaks than her daughter in a district school. She was a mountain of rotundity, a conjunction of palpitating spheres, but the soul that dwelt in this painfully ponderous body was as mellow with affection and kindliness as a ripe pear, and the voice that proceeded from her ever-smiling lips was a hoarse and dove-like ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to Hartford by the league seemed in no wise calculated to compete with men of such capacity. They were two lean Yankee lawyers, litigious-looking varlets, and evidently men of no substance, since they had no rotundity in the belt, and there was no jingling of money in their pockets; it is true they had longer heads than the Dutchmen; but if the heads of the latter were flat at top, they were broad at bottom, and what was wanting in height of forehead was made ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... I travelled in the train from Le Mans, through a country that was really pretty, and looked more like the usual English than like the usual French scenery, with its fields cut up by hedges and a considerable rotundity in its trees. On my way from the station to the hotel, however, it became plain that I should lack a good pretext for passing that night at the Cheval Blanc; I foresaw that I should have con- tented myself before th e end of the day. I remained at the White Horse only long ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... to that which modern science has built on the theory of universal gravitation. The Greeks divided the heavens into constellations fourteen centuries before Christ. Thales, born 640 B.C., taught the rotundity of the earth, and that the moon shines with reflected light. He also predicted eclipses. Anaximander, born 610 B.C., invented the gnomon, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... incapable of keeping coherent the vast tissue of discordant Mormon elements, in case he should survive Brigham, is the latter's equal in years, but in all things else his antipodes. His height is over six feet, his form of aldermanic rotundity, his face large, plethoric, and lustrous with the stable red of stewed cranberries, while his small, twinkling black beads of eyes and a Satyric sensualism about the mouth would indicate a temperament fatally in the way of any apostleship ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... came and camped on the scene until the crisis was over, soft-voiced, soft-fingered and serenely sure of herself. Sarah had never married, and even though she had in the long interval which, year by year, had brought to Caleb a more placid rotundity grown slender and slenderer still, and flat-chested and sharp-angled in face and figure, Caleb knew that underneath it all there had been no shrinkage in her soul—knew that there were no bleak expanses in her heart, or edges ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... reducing the percentage content of protein. In animals the same is noticeable. Young animals are, pound for pound, richer in protein than old animals. While in the case of vegetables the increase in size, or rotundity, is due to starch and carbohydrates, in animals it is due to the addition of fat. But plants, like animals, observe the same general laws as to changes in composition ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... succulent tuber at the root of it which one could EAT. Think of the joy, the wonder, of that momentous discovery! Did he hide it away, lest others should be as happy as himself? Were ditectives set to watch him, to spy out the cause of a habit of sleek rotundity that was growing upon him at last visibly? We shall never know. Or did he call in his neighbors at once and annouce it? Did someone ask: 'What shall we name this God-given thing?'—and did another reply: 'It looks to me ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... corrected recently in this way, the demarcation or line of demarcation falls near Gilolo, an island near the Malucos. This is so on the plane surface of their map. When this plane surface is reduced to a spherical one, because of the rotundity of the sea where these voyages are made—the latter being in addition along parallels other than that of the equinoctial and where the degrees are less than those of the equinoctial, (the same league being assigned to the different ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... which occurred at his tomb, some of which cures, however, were very gradual. We are also told that when a humble hunchback bowed the knee in adoration at the tomb of St. Andreas, his irresistible faith instantly released him from his unnatural rotundity. In 1243 a Ferrara writer was at Padua, and while attending vespers at the tomb where the sainted body of the Minorite Anthony reposed, he affirms that he saw a person who had been mute from his birth recover his voice ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... one of the temple quarters was wanting. I am no phrenologist, not knowing one organ from another, but I thought the skull of that wretched man no study. If it was particular for anything, it was for a smooth, almost perfect rotundity, with only a little protuberance above ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... woman should be a load for a camel, and in deference to this taste they fatten themselves up until they become mountains of flesh. Where obesity is considered a charm, delicacy of outline ceases to be regarded, and a woman who has not rotundity is regarded as an unfortunate being. They are decidedly the greatest collection of well-fed females to be seen ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... no wife. Not only that, Hugo Mandle, at forty, had no thought of marrying. Not that there was anything austere or saturnine about Hugo. He made you think, somehow, of a cherubic, jovial monk. It may have been his rosy rotundity, or, perhaps, the way in which his thinning hair vanished altogether at the top of his head, so as to form a tonsure. Hugo Mandle, kindly, generous, shrewd, spoiled his old mother in the way in which ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... is amplified and ripened, while purified, in the calm warmth of emotion. From being emotive, poetry draws in more of the man, and higher, finer powers, than prose. The poetical has, must have, rotundity. No poet ever had a square head. Prose, in its naked quality, is to poetry what a skeleton is to a moving, flesh-and-spirit-endowed body. From the skeleton you can learn osteology, but neither aesthetics nor human nature. Imaginative prose partakes ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... fast, and whom to meet in this place caused him a very disagreeable sensation. The first man was Mademoiselle de Corandeuil's coachman, as large a fellow as ever crushed the seats of landau or brougham with his rotundity. He was advancing with hands in the pockets of his green jacket and his broad shoulders thrown back, as if he had taken it upon himself to replace Atlas. His cap, placed in military fashion upon his head, his scowling ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... will be lost below his waistcoat. Already their tops and hulls, like battered caravels, disappear beneath his fat horizon. With him I bear no fellowship. But although nature has not stuffed me with her sweets to this thick rotundity; alas, despite of tubes and bottles, no shadowy garden flourishes on my top—waving capillary grasses and a prim path between the bush. Rather, I bear a general parade and smooth pleasance open to ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... of their contemporaneous churches, where such have remained; and in all such cases the character of the masonry is identical. The cause which I should rather assign for this greater longevity would be their rotundity, and still more, their superior altitude. A church of moderate size, and humble height, might be easily injured, or even destroyed, by neighbouring or foreign assailants, but the destruction of a tower, or even its injury, beyond the burning of its wooden floors and ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson |
