"Ninepins" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... find Tony, whom I could trust to have commandeered some news for me by this time. Already the drawing-room was crammed with perfumed people and too fragrant flowers, and a babel of chatter. I should have had to knock fat old ladies and thin old gentlemen about like ninepins to sort out from among bonneted and bald pates the inconspicuous brown head I sought, and my search was checked constantly by well-meaning creatures who pined to tell me how pretty the wedding had been, or how much I had grown since they saw me last. Now and then, however, ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Nicholas Pudding come and Timothy Thomas and John Biles creep down the gallery stairs with their fiddles under their arms, and poor Dan'l Hornhead with his serpent, and Robert Dowdle with his clarionet, all looking as little as ninepins; and out they went. The pa'son might have forgi'ed 'em when he learned the truth o't, but the squire would not. That very week he sent for a barrel- organ that would play two-and-twenty new psalm-tunes, so exact and particular that, however sinful inclined you was, ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... granite which contrast so strongly with the southern swamps; upstanding outcrops resembling cathedrals and castellations in ruins; boulders like footballs of enormous dimensions; pyramids a thousand feet high; and solitary cones which rise like giant ninepins. We know too little of the lands lying south-east of the confluence to determine the sequence of the chain, whose counterforts may give rise to the Eastern 'Oil Rivers.' It is not connected with the Peak of Camarones, round ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... inland Australia while you stay a few thousand miles away. Otherwise, your preconceived notions are almost sure to totter to their foundations; and nothing is more annoying than to have elaborately built-up, delightfully logical theories, played ninepins with by an old greybeard of a black, who apparently objects to his beliefs being classified, docketed, and pigeon-holed, until ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... though in many cases they have been considerably developed and improved. Kayles—derived from the French word quilles—was a great favourite in the fourteenth century, and was undoubtedly the parent of our modern game of ninepins. Kayle-pins were not confined in those days to any particular number, and they were generally made of a conical shape and set up ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... as a bag of ninepins,' explained Cripplestraw in continuation. 'You can feel 'em quite plain, Mis'ess Anne. If ye would like to, he'll undo his sleeve in a ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... "It isn't often I dare trust myself up here. Makes me feel as though I'd like to go amongst those sauntering swells and mincing ladies in their muslins and laces, and parasols, and run amuck amongst them—send them down like a pack of ninepins. Aye, I'd send them ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... where the whole territory available for strategic purposes is so comparatively limited. Belgium, for instance, has long been the bowling-alley where kings roll cannon-balls at each other's armies; but here we are playing the game of live ninepins ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... you play ninepins, denotes that you are foolishly wasting your energy and opportunities. You should be careful in the selection of companions. All phases ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... had addressed in this amiable manner was an old man with a wooden leg. He had lost his leg in the factory twelve years previous, hence his nickname, "Ninepins." He now had charge of a number of girls whom he treated rudely, shouting and swearing at them. The working of these machines needed as much attention of the eye as deftness of hand in lifting up the full spools and replacing them with empty ones, and fastening the broken thread. He was convinced ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... well as you do that you musn't speak to people unless you've been introduced to them. But the phrase "brother artists" had played ninepins with ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... amongst a people that did not understand the process of salting fish; and my brother observed derisively, much to my grief, that a wretched ichthyophagous people must make shocking soldiers, weak as water, and liable to be knocked over like ninepins; whereas, in his army, not a man ever ate herrings, pilchards, mackerels, or, in fact, condescended to any thing ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... out, and bending as low as possible, we started up. We had to pass right in the line of fire. The men began to fall like ninepins. God be thanked that I was able to run as I did. I thought my heart would burst, and was about to throw myself on the ground, unable to continue, when your image and that of Bolli rose before my eyes, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... rubbers. Wish I had a long-sleeved apron, for my bare neck and arms. Wish I might push my curls out of my eyes, or have them cut off. Wish my dress would stay up on my shoulders, and that it was not too nice for me to get on the floor to play ninepins. Wish my mamma would go to walk with me sometimes, instead of Betty. Wish she would let me lay my cheek to hers, (if I would not tumble her curls, or her collar.) Wish she would not promise me something "very ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... can be going to match himself against that Wirepuller!" CODLINGSBY exclaimed, as an enormous Caucusite—no other than SCHNADDY, indeed, the famous ex-Brummagem bruiser, before whose fists the Blues went down like ninepins—fought his way up to the spot where, pluckily, but a little too negligently, TIDDLEMPOPS and one or two of his young friends were bringing aristocratic laissez faire to bear against the fortiter in re of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various
... liveries of old Lewis Baboon. This coming to Mrs. Bull's ears, when John Bull came home, he found all his family in an uproar. Mrs. Bull, you must know, was very apt to be choleric. "You sot," says she, "you loiter about alehouses and taverns, spend your time at billiards, ninepins, or puppet-shows, or flaunt about the streets in your new gilt chariot, never minding me nor your numerous family. Don't you hear how Lord Strutt has bespoke his liveries at Lewis Baboon's shop? Don't you see how that old fox steals away your customers, and turns you out of your ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... box of ninepins very much the same game can be played. In wet weather, in the hall, a box of large ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... first heard "Blow the Man Down," "Flying Cloud," and "Whisky, Johnny, Whisky." Oh, it was brave. I was beginning to grasp the meaning of life. Here was no commonplace, no Oakland Estuary, no weary round of throwing newspapers at front doors, delivering ice, and setting up ninepins. All the world was mine, all its paths were under my feet, and John Barleycorn, tricking my fancy, enabled me to anticipate the life of adventure ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... new objects of wonder presented themselves. On a level spot in the centre was a company of odd-looking personages playing at ninepins. They were dressed in a quaint outlandish fashion; some wore short doublets, others jerkins, with long knives in their belts, and most of them had enormous breeches of similar style with that of the guide's. Their visages, too, were peculiar; one had a large beard, broad face, and ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... fell one against another, like ninepins: and Roy, hating the man, turned sharply away. But rebuke was futile. One could do nothing. It was that which galled him. One could only pass on; mentally brushing them aside—like ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... thoroughly American in coloring and flavor, even if they did happen to be written in England. No story in our literature is better known than that of Rip Van Winkle watching Hendrick Hudson and his ghostly crew playing ninepins in the Catskill Mountains and quaffing the magic liquor which caused him to sleep ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... score of men who had squeaked on to the ship after the roll-call at Bombay. These were solemnly drawn up in a line as defaulters and magisterially called to attention to receive judgment. On coming to attention they over-balanced with the regularity of ninepins in a row: and after three attempts the major had to harangue them standing (nominally) at ease. Even so, his admonition was rather impaired by his suddenly sitting down on the deck, and having to leave rather hurriedly for his cabin ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... Savage?" calls Samuel, as he pushes three men over like ninepins, to seize a shabby fellow whose neckcloth and hair-cut betray him as being a poet. "How now, Dick, you said that Italian music was damnably bad! Why do ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... courage in doing a thing one wants to do," answered Winifred, her slim, ringless hand responding to the kind pressure of the plump one wearing too many rings. (They were all rubies to-night. Miss Rolls had read about a wonderful Russian woman before whom men went down like ninepins and who always matched her ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... the history and memoirs of the times, that the people were more given to games of skill and exercise than games of chance. Before the introduction of the arquebus and gunpowder, they applied themselves to the practice of archery, and in all times they played at quoits, ninepins, bowls, and other similar ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... with excitement at meeting their friends, and mountains of luggage barging in every direction, she stayed close by the side of this man she disliked intensely, yet whose smooth ability to deal with men and matters she could not but admire. Obstacles fell down like ninepins before him; stewards ran after him; officials waited upon him; his baggage, the heaviest and most cumbersome on the ship, was the first to go down the gangway, and April's with it. A few hurried farewells, and she found herself seated beside him in an open landau, ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... saw that, sor, of course," put in Garry, pouring out some brandy into a tumbler which he proceeded to fill up with water—"aqua pura," he called it. "I've shtrapped it on ag'in now, and it looks as nate as ninepins. But jist dhrink this, colonel, dear. It'll warrm the cockles of your heart, sure, an' put frish ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... resist him in former days in India. They went down before his charms like a row of ninepins before a ball. I don't deny a passing tendresse for him myself, though I was married and very happily married. So I can well comprehend how he may take a girl's fancy by storm. Sans peur et sans reproche, he must seem to her.—And so in the main, I dare say, he is. At worst ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the square, I roamed round the little town, distracting my mind by forcing an interest in what was going on. The Highlanders were happy, noisy, and full of confidence—not unjustly, for so far they had played ninepins with the Royal troops. Everywhere they were hard at it, sharpening dirks and claymores and furbishing muskets, and such of their talk as I could understand was all of battle imminent. In the churchyard I found a number of them practising shooting, with a grand ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... building to the Jews for a stately synagogue. Inigo Jones's portico was let out for shops, the nave was turned into cavalry barracks. An order, quoted by Sir Henry Ellis, of which there is a copy in the British Museum, came out in 1651 prohibiting the soldiers from playing at ninepins from nine p.m. till six a.m., as the noise disturbs the residents in the neighbourhood, and they are also forbidden to disturb the peaceable passers by. At the Church of St. Gregory by St. Paul, ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... Cardigan Street, Mrs Yabsley went into the back room, and returned grunting under the weight of a dozen bottles of beer in a basket. Then, one by one, she set them in the middle of the table like a group of ninepins. It seemed a pity to break the set, but they were thirsty, and the pieman was not due for half an hour. A bottle was opened with infinite precaution, but the faint plop of the cork reached the sharp ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... waves increased in size, and coursed to all directions, as if distorted by the sunken reefs. The eastern jamb is formed by Tiran Island; the western by the sandy Ras Nasrani, whose glaring tawny slope is dotted with dark basaltic cones, detached and disposed like great ninepins. Beyond this cape the Sinaitic coast, as far as Ras Mohammed, the apex of the triangle, is fretted with little indentations; hence its name, El-Shurum—"the Creeks." Near one of these baylets, Wellsted chanced upon "volcanic rocks which are not found in any other part ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... Rehouilhes rose up against the inhabitants of the neighbouring town of Lourdes, and got the better of them, by their magical powers as it is said. The people of Lourdes were conquered and slain, and their ghastly, bloody heads served the triumphant Cagots for balls to play at ninepins with! The local parliaments had begun, by this time, to perceive how oppressive was the ban of public opinion under which the Cagots lay, and were not inclined to enforce too severe a punishment. Accordingly, the decree of the parliament of Toulouse condemned only the leading Cagots concerned ...
— An Accursed Race • Elizabeth Gaskell
... with all his strength, and seated himself again, in his own place. Then still more men fell down, one after the other; they brought nine dead men's legs and two skulls, and set them up and played at ninepins with them. The youth also wanted to play and said: "Hark you, can I join you?" "Yes, if thou hast any money." "Money enough," replied he, "but your balls are not quite round." Then he took the skulls and put them in the lathe and turned them till they were round. "There, now, they will ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... No one believes these fallacies which you are exposing—the Nonconformists least of all. Those I have talked with don't hold these absurd opinions that you put down to them. You don't even touch their real position. You are elaborately knocking down ninepins that have never stood up, because they ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... "the only thing that the Church has yet done is to forbid and to frown. We have abundance of tracts against dancing, whist-playing, ninepins, billiards, operas, theatres,—in short, anything that young people would be apt to like. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church refused to testify against slavery, because of political diffidence, but made up for it by ordering a more stringent crusade against ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... fortune than of nature: in truth he is the most active youth we know; a great pitcher of the bar, an excellent wrestler, a great player at cricket, runs like a buck, leaps like a wild goat, and plays at ninepins as if by witchcraft; sings like a lark, and touches a guitar delightfully and, above all, he handles a sword like the ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... stultify every rule of precaution and violate every law of chance. I have studied this game for close upon twenty years, and reduced it almost to mathematics; and I foresee that you will play—nay, you have already played— ninepins with my most certain conclusions. But you have as gentlefolks, with all the disabilities of gentlefolks, the one thing that all these experts have fatally ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... got himself, and shoved—shoved till the scrum was rolled back across the lounge; shoved till the side, which was being run off its feet, broke up in laughter, and was at once knocked down like ninepins by the rush of the winning forwards; shoved till his own crowd fell over the prostrate forms of their victims, and collapsed into a heap of humanity on ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... to describe all the sights of this wondrous fair, the church crowded with worshippers, the halt and sick praying for healing, the churchyard full of traders, the sheriff proclaiming new laws, the young men bowling at ninepins, pedlars shouting their wares, players performing the miracle play on a movable stage, bands of pipers, lowing oxen, neighing horses, and bleating sheep. It was a merry sight that medieval ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... was like knocking down the first of a row of ninepins, but none could have suspected that the last of these stood ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... waves of the Polar Sea. June was advancing, and the ice began to move perceptibly at a distance from the shore; and as the icebergs knocked and fell against each other, the crash was truly awful. I can only liken it to what we might suppose produced by a set of monster ninepins tumbled about by a party of gigantic Dutchmen. I must relate one more event, which served to convince my companions of the perfect correctness of my statements. One night, as I was retiring to rest, I heard footsteps approaching our hut, and, ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... masses of population. Politics was a gentleman's game. The nobleman who sat in the upper house had his dummies in the lower chamber. A certain Sir James Lowther had nine proteges in the lower house, who were commonly called "Lowther's Ninepins." A distinguished statesman of the time described the position of such a protege: "He is sent here by the lord of this or the duke of that, and if he does not obey the instructions which he receives, he is held to ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... sit up as straight as ninepins; we'll show 'em how city boys behave," said Nate, making ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May
... York who, driven from home by a termagant wife strolls into a ravine of the Katskill Mountains, falls in with a strange man whom he assists in carrying a keg, and comes upon a company of odd-looking creatures playing at ninepins, but never uttering a word, when, seizing an opportunity that offered, he took up one of the kegs he had carried, fell into a stupor, and slept 20 years, to find his beard and all the world ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... scandalously bought. This is the only conceivable explanation of the reception my play has met with. They got at the members of my company. My actors played better at first, better at rehearsal. Yesterday and to-day they have played like a row of wooden ninepins, of straw-stuffed scarecrows, of rot-stricken idiots! They missed their cues, and forgot their lines, or pretended to do so; and then had the infernal impertinence to giggle and gag, blast them! I heard them. I could have screamed. I tried to stop them; and the stage-manager ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... sot, you loiter about ale-houses and taverns, spend your time at billiards, ninepins, or puppet-shows, never minding me nor my numerous family. Don't you hear how lord Strutt [the king of Spain] has bespoke his liveries at Lewis Baboon's shop [France]?... Fie upon it! Up, man!... I'll sell my shift before I'll be so ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... the time that represents this era. Weber, in his Lectures on Sanskrit Literature (p. 7), rightly says that to seek for an exact date is fruitless labor; while Whitney compares Hindu dates to ninepins—set up only to be bowled down again. Schroeder, in his Indiens Literatur und Cultur, suggests that the prior limit may be "a few centuries earlier than 1500," agreeing with Weber's preferred reckoning; but Whitney, Grassmann, and Benfey provisionally assume 2000 ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... Europeans unwittingly call after his Persian enemies' nickname, "Tamerlane," i.e. Taymur-I-lang, or limping Taymur, is still known as "Al-Wahsh" (the wild beast) at Damascus, where his Tartars used to bury men up to their necks and play at bowls with their heads for ninepins. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... a despairing look over the dark Square below. By the light of the lanterns he can see the wooden candles above the grocer's shop knocking together like ninepins; the street lamps shiver and swing; a high wind has sprung up. Next moment a deluge of rain comes down; the Place empties entirely; such as the fear of the Convention and its dread decree had not put to flight scatter in terror of a wetting. Hanriot's guns are abandoned, and when the ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... road meandered, was rich and beautiful; the weather very fine; and for many miles the Kaatskill mountains, where Rip Van Winkle and the ghostly Dutchmen played at ninepins one memorable gusty afternoon, towered in the blue distance, like stately clouds. At one point, as we ascended a steep hill, athwart whose base a railroad, yet constructing, took its course, we came upon an ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... church breathless and panting, for it was up-hill and the wind against us. John Glass, the clerk, came to meet us to offer his help. There were seven or eight present. Returning it was worse; the wind was at our backs, and at different times Ellen and I were blown down like ninepins. I have since been told by the people, "When you hear a puff coming, stand or duck till it is over and then go on." On these windy days the dust and litter that come from the thatch are ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... with all my strength, lashing him fair across the face and cutting his cheek open. He reeled backwards in his saddle, and I, first letting out right and left at the two overseers, who stood one on each side of me, and bowling them over like a couple of ninepins, sprang upon him, seized him by the collar, and dragged him out of his saddle, and, leaping upon the frightened horse's back, gave the poor brute a lash across the flank, which sent him flying down the road, through ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... their bravery vanished like breath from the face of a looking-glass. They hesitated, and a rain of bullets wrought terrible havoc amongst their ranks. On every side the fighting-men of Bekwando went down like ninepins—about half a dozen only sprang forward for a hand-to-hand fight, the remainder, with shrieks of despair, fled back to the shelter of the forest, and not one of them again ever showed a bold front to the white man. Trent, for a moment or two, was busy, for a burly savage, who had marked him out ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... bluff, hunt the slopper[obs3], hide and seek, kiss in the ring; snapdragon; cross questions and crooked answers.; crisscross, hopscotch; jacks, jackstones[obs3], marbles; mumblety-peg, mumble-the-peg, pushball, shinney, shinny, tag &c. billiards, pool, pingpong, pyramids, bagatelle; bowls, skittles, ninepins, kain[obs3], American bowls[obs3]; tenpins [U.S.], tivoli. cards, card games; whist, rubber; round game; loo, cribbage, besique[obs3], euchre, drole[obs3], ecarte[Fr], picquet[obs3], allfours[obs3], quadrille, omber, reverse, Pope Joan, commit; boston, boaston[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... for you," she declared. "You are six foot four, and you look as though you could hew your way through life with a cudgel. One could fancy you a Don Quixote amongst the shams, knocking them over like ninepins, and moving aside neither to the right nor to the left. But what is a poor weak girl to do? She wants some one, Mr. Andrew, to wield the cudgel ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... drive them back defeated and discomfited. I confess that I should like to have old Vermack and a few of our other men to follow up the enemy. Depend upon it, they would give a good account of all they caught sight of. The Dutchman, who hates the Zulus with all his heart, would knock them over like ninepins." ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... what? Ay did I, once—and got knocked down as sharp as ninepins. Standing up! I'd love to see thee try it. Thou'd not be ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... slept. She drank wine—that is to say, something from a bottle in the cellaret—for her stomach's sake, but if she did not fall asleep she would sometimes come into the nursery to see that the children were really playing. Now bricks, wooden hoops, ninepins, and chinaware cannot amuse forever, especially when all Fairyland is to be won by the mere opening of a book, and, as often as not, Punch would be discovered reading to Judy or tell her interminable tales. That was an offence in the eyes of the law, and Judy would be whisked ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling |
