"Battledore" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Gillian's genuine delight in games not merely entered into for the sake of the little ones. But there was a strong devotion growing up in her to her aunt and to Mysie, and what they asked of her she did—even when on a wet day her aunt condemned her to learn battledore and shuttle-cock of Gillian, who was equally to be pitied for the awkwardness of her pupil and the banter of her brothers, while Dolly picked up her shuttlecock and tossed it off with grim determination, as if doing penance for this ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... warm, and cheerful. Immediately after breakfast we separated, each in search of amusement suited to his or her own tastes: some to the music room, some to the library, and Robert Dudley and Annie Donaldson to a game of battledore and shuttlecock in the wide hall, with Mr. Arlington for a spectator. As the storm increased, however, all seemed to feel the want of companionship, and without any preconcerted plan, we found ourselves, ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... which struck me as being an interesting-looking book, for hitherto, I had never even seen a Greek letter. I went to my Dames, where I found Tyrrel ma, and Kennedy, who shared my room, playing at battledore. ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... had but a glimpse, but hours could not have made the picture more vivid. I could see the great wind. The tops of the palms are flying about like Brobdingnagian birds, their long blades darting out like infuriated tongues. I saw the oranges flung about in a great game of battledore and shuttlecock—as if the hurricane remembered to play in its fury! I saw men shrieking at the masts of a ship. Their puny lives! Why are they not glad to die so ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... of Paris, and in the neighbouring villages, where many of the allied troops were quartered, they appeared always on the best terms with the female inhabitants, and were often to be seen assisting them in their work, playing at the battledore and shuttlecock with them in the streets, or strolling in their company along the banks of the Seine, and through the woods of Belleville or St Cloud, evidently to the satisfaction of both parties. Much must be allowed for the ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... is what cricket and boating, battledore and archery, shinney and skating, fishing, hunting, shooting, and baseball mean, namely, that there is a joyous spontaneity in human beings; and thus Nature, by means of the sporting world, by means ...
— A Lecture on Physical Development, and its Relations to Mental and Spiritual Development, delivered before the American Institute of Instruction, at their Twenty-Ninth Annual Meeting, in Norwich, Conn • S.R. Calthrop
... sequel which would have stated his reforms more systematically; that this may have been the case appears from the statement on p. 25 that the alphabet "is preparing," and from the mention, on the last page, of "the ensuing Batl-dur" (i.e. battledore or hornbook). His remedy, briefly, is to replace digraphs by new symbols: "more Letters would do well in the Alfabet, but fewer in most words" (p. 25); and, like John Hart before him (whose works perhaps he knew) and Bernard Shaw after, he draws attention to the economies to be gained ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... over the wall, eager for a first sight of her home after all the long time she had been absent from it, saw an old pair of kitchen bellows, numberless scraps of paper, a broken battledore, a shabby straw hat, and three grubby, battered dolls perched up against an old tub, which had once contained flowers, but had long since ceased ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... griefs; and this in itself makes him look solitary, for we are much given in this town to merry-making with our little ones, and it is a common sight to see old and young together on the green, making sport with ball or battledore. ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... and got up like a regular jarvey. Devilish rich, y'know—call him 'The Golden Ball'—deuce of a fellow! Pitch and toss, or whist at five pound points, damme! Won small fortune from Petersham at battledore and shuttlecock,—played all ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... his sisters' games began to bore him. His strong arms no longer wanted to play battledore and shuttlecock, they longed to throw stones. The squabbles over a petty game of croquet, which demanded neither muscle nor ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... merchant's clerk, when she might have said it to a merchant's son. Aunt Pen watched and approved this stratagem, hoped for the best results, and believed the day won when Debby grew pale and silent, and followed with her eyes the young couple who were playing battledore and shuttle-cock with each other's hearts, as if she took some interest in the game. But Aunt Pen clashed her cymbals too soon; for Debby's trouble had a better source than jealousy, and in the silence of the sleepless nights that stole her bloom she was taking counsel of her own full heart, and ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... as it were, are seldom able to concentrate their attention on the one thought which should apparently swamp all others. They either yield to the strain, and lapse into unconsciousness, or their minds become the arena of minor emotions, wherein trivialities play battledore and shuttlecock with the tremendous issues of the moment. When a more extended knowledge of all that had happened, joined to a nicer adjustment of the time-factor in events, enabled Elsie to realise ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... howl, but the rock walls seemed to catch it as a battledore catches a shuttlecock, and send it bounding back to me. I knew then that a cry from those depths would not carry far; and the fear at my heart gave ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... faded by the sun, dominated, at its far end, by a statue rising from a fountain, in front of which a little girl with reddish hair was playing with a shuttlecock; when, from the path, another little girl, who was putting on her cloak and covering up her battledore, called out sharply: "Good-bye, Gilberte, I'm going home now; don't forget, we're coming to you this evening, after dinner." The name Gilberte passed close by me, evoking all the more forcibly her whom it labelled in that it did not merely ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... the value of this history, or cover its blunders, to say, that I have never seen Oxford? That the thick fogs of penury, prevented the sun of science from beaming upon the mind? That necessity obliged me to lay down the battledore, before I was master of the letters? And that, instead of handling systems of knowledge, my hands, at the early period of seven, became ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... which it is distinguished by the non-jointed axis and somewhat shorter awns. This is the race most commonly grown in the British Isles and in central Europe, and includes a large number of sub-races and varieties among which are the finest malting-barleys. The chief sub-races are (a) peacock, fan or battledore barley, described by Linnaeus as a distinct species, H. zeocriton, with erect short ears about 2-1/2 in. long, broad at the base and narrow at the tip, suggesting an open fan or peacock's tail; (b) erect-eared barleys ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... came by, and seeing Fanny digging away and making herself very hot, promised her that in the evening he would put the ground to rights. As she found that Norman was not disposed to garden, she invited him to have a game of battledore ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... had been like to do, while conscious of the loss which had fallen on him. It was at this moment when he began to perceive that his fortune would return to him, when he became aware that he was knocked about like a shuttlecock from a battledore, that his pride came by its first fall. Mollett was in truth the great man,—the Warwick who was to make and unmake the kings of Castle Richmond. A month ago, and it had pleased Earl Mollett to say that Owen Fitzgerald should reign; but there had been a turn upon the cards, and now he, King ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... An old broken battledore, and some shuttlecocks with most of the feathers missing, were on a marble slab in one corner of the hall, which constantly reminded me that there had once been younger inhabitants here than the old lady and her gray-headed ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... isolated? I do, too. And I'm going to get out. I'm tired of decorating a set where the shuttle-cock of conversation is worn thin, frayed, ragged! Where the battledore is fashionable scandal and the players half dead with ennui and ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... I went into the room where my father's body lay, and my mother sat weeping alone by it. I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a-beating the coffin and calling 'Papa,' for I know not how, I had some slight idea that he was locked up there."—STEELE, ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... banks on either side as he needs them. The banks help, but it takes lightning combinations of wisdom, skill and strength to make the turns in safety for all that, nor does he have a chance for a long breath before he shoots at ever increasing speed into the "battledore" where the course turns almost at a right angle and shoots him on into the "shuttlecock" where he must negotiate another right angle. Then he must immediately take "stream corner" and be ready for his plunge into "the straight." From this again he has to take "Bulpett's ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard |
