"Backgammon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and by a pair of dreadnought pilot-trousers, whereof the waistband was so very broad and high, that it became a succedaneum for a waistcoat: being ornamented near the wearer's breastbone with some massive wooden buttons, like backgammon men. As the lower portions of these pantaloons became revealed, Bunsby stood confessed; his hands in their pockets, which were of vast size; and his gaze directed, not to Captain Cuttle or the ladies, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... taught this animal, while he accompanied its movements with a song, to mount upon little cylindrical blocks of wood, placed successively one above another, and in shape resembling the dice-box belonging to a backgammon table. In this manner the goat stood, first, on the top of two; afterwards, of three, four, five, and six, until it remained balanced upon the summit of them all, elevated several feet above the ground, ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... furnishings indispensable to the elegance of a 'gentleman's seat'; and in many cases the guests, unless a Gibbon were among them, remained ignorant whether the labels on their backs told a truthful tale, or whether they disguised an ingenious box or backgammon board, or formed a mere ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... the Friar's chicken that Miss Delavie left for him, and he amused himself for an hour with Master Eugene, after which he did me the honour to play two plays at backgammon." ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she was waiting to be read to." "Miss Wickham's compliments, but did Miss Marsh know that the horses were at the door?" "Miss Wickham's compliments, and should she have Kate set out the backgammon board?" ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... father withdrew into his small library, and she and her mother were left alone. Mrs. Hale had never cared much for books, and had discouraged her husband, very early in their married life, in his desire of reading aloud to her, while she worked. At one time they had tried backgammon as a resource; but as Mr. Hale grew to take an increasing interest in his school and his parishioners, he found that the interruptions which arose out of these duties were regarded as hardships ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... hot, and the steam stood so thick on the glass inside that one could not see in; but at other times, when there was no company, I have peeped through the red curtains and watched Elzevir Block and Ratsey playing backgammon at the trestle-table by the fire. It was on the trestle-table that Block had afterwards laid out his son's dead body, and some said they had looked through the window at night and seen the father trying to wash the blood-matting out of the boy's yellow hair, and heard ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... with the grave and self-denying habits to which the Dominicans were devoted in their neighboring cells. The festive season was nearly at an end, for it was the 20th of February, but the evening had been more than usually gay, and had been spent in games at chess, tables, or backgammon, reading romances of chivalry, harping and singing. King James himself, brave and handsome, and in the prime of life, was the blithest of the whole joyous party. He was the most accomplished man in his dominions; for though ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... any one of the following: globe microscope, silver fruit-knife, silver napkin-ring, book or books worth $2.50. For six, at $1.60 each, we will give any one of the following: a silver fruit-knife (marked), silver napkin-ring, pen-knives, scissors, backgammon board, note-paper and envelopes stamped with initials, books worth $3.00. For ten, at 1.60 each, select any one of the following: morocco travelling-bag, stereoscope with six views, silver napkin-ring, compound microscope, lady's work-box, sheet-music or books worth $5.00. For twenty, at $1.60 ...
— The Nursery, No. 109, January, 1876, Vol. XIX. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Unknown
... example given by the blessed Bishop of Geneva, who did not scruple to cheat at cards. But I cannot defend myself against the reflection that at play men are much more sensitive than in serious business, and that they employ the whole of their probity at the backgammon board, where it incommodes them but indifferently, whereas they put it entirely in the background in a battle or a treaty of peace, where it would be troublesome. Polyaenus, sir, has written, in the Greek language a book on Stratagems, wherein is shown to what excess ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... for sale, which are so well known and so justly admired all round the neighbourhood, and found in almost every house to this day. These were the quiet and sensible men, who made the best of their misfortunes. Others were playing dominoes, draughts, backgammon, and cribbage, the boards and appliances all their own work. Some sang songs to a small admiring audience. All talked and at the same time, and nowhere more than where card-playing was going on, which was all over the room, and the more vociferously ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown
... the large piece so it that can make no move, or that the big piece takes all its adversaries. A take can only be made by the large piece when it finds a piece immediately on each side of it and a blank point beyond. Or he watched a party of several, with the pictured sheet of Japanese backgammon before them, write their names on slips of paper or wood, and throw in turn a die. The slips are placed on the pictures whose numbers correspond with the throw. At the next round, if the number thrown by the particular player is written on the picture, he finds directions as ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... can invite him to work out a problem in the higher mathematics or to perform a difficult chemical analysis with her as his collaborator, as less instructed dames ask their husbands to play a game of checkers or backgammon, they can have delightful and instructive evenings together. I hope our young Doctor will take kindly to his wife's ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... recreation. I was introduced to one of these circles, and went to their garden, which was large and well-shaded with walnut trees. About the centre was a large pleasure house, furnished with billiard, chess, and backgammon tables. Some of the party were engaged at bowls; their game differs from ours in many respects, as here they prefer a gravel walk or uneven surface, and they throw the bowl a considerable height into the air, instead ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... Missy? If Mr. Big Josh would jes stop talkin' 'bout it an' buil' hisse'f a road! He been lowin' he wa' gonter git busy an' backgammon that lane fer twenty-five years an he ain't never tech it yit. That's the reason they done sent fer me. The ladies in the fambly air done plum wo' out what with cookin' fer comp'ny an' washin' up an' all. It looks like ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... all, I may have been unfair to her!" said Molly. "People are so queer! They seem sometimes to be altogether made up of odd bits of different people. There's Aunt Ann now! she would not do a tradesman out of a ha'penny, but she will cheat at backgammon!" ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... and backgammon, with exercise and pleasant converse, will while away the intervening hours so quickly, that, if you do not keep a bright look-out, you will be surprised by the dinner-bell before you think of your toilet, which, if a luxury to you ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... between decks ceased in time. Our own party of nine had the poop to ourselves, and were very comfortable; we soon got to like the life, and generally arranged some way of spending each day agreeably. We had a fair library, chess, backgammon, whist, etc., and when we got into the Tropics and had occasional calms, we went out in the captain's gig; then further south we had shooting matches at Cape pigeons and albatrosses, and in all our amusements the captain and Lapworth ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... stock-in-trade, or the impounding of a strayed cow, until he has commanded, in Norman-French, the attention of the sleepy rustics. The language of the stable and the kennel is rich in traces of Norman influence; and in backgammon, as played by orthodox players, we have a suggestive memorial of those Norman nobles, of whom Fortescue, in the 'De Laudibus' observes: "Neither had they delyght to hunt, and to exercise other sportes and pastimes, ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... only nineteen at the time; but I could read the fly-leaf in the family Bible as well as another (it was one of the three books which, with the backgammon-board, formed my uncle's library), and know that she was born in the year '37, and christened by Doctor Swift, Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin: hence she was three-and-twenty years old at the time she and I ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cheerful sound, and Mrs. Nancy felt quite overcome with joy and gratitude at having been the chosen instrument of his preservation. When she lighted the lamp in the evening and began her regular game of backgammon, David curled himself up at her feet in a most companionable manner, and pricked his ears with interest at the fall ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... declared, passing his hand through his hair and giving a glance at the long narrow mirror which adorned the space between the two windows, and which had at its base a little gilded bracket covered by a thin slab of white marble, supporting in its turn a backgammon board folded together in the shape of two volumes, two shining folios inscribed in letters of greenish gilt, History of England. If Morris had been pleased to describe the master of the house as a heartless scoffer, it is because he thought him too much on ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... always have. My dreams so often come true. Do not lose hope, Mr. Marrapit." She continued with a beautiful air of timidity: "Oh, Mr. Marrapit, I know I am only here on sufferance, but your careworn air emboldens me to suggest—it might keep your poor mind from thinking—a game of backgammon such as we used ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... spades, hearts, clubs, diamonds; major suit, minor suit. bower; right bower, left bower; dummy; jackpot; deck. [hands at poker: list] pair, two pair, three of a kind, straight, flush, full-house, four of a kind, royal flush; misere &c [board games: list] chess, draughts, checkers, checquers, backgammon, dominos, merelles^, nine men's morris, go bang, solitaire; game of fox and goose; monopoly; loto &c; [word games: list], scrabble, scribbage, boggle, crossword puzzle, hangman. morra^; gambling ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... meals every day, and people ate, and walked till they could eat again; while some, extended on sofas, slept over odd volumes of novels from the ship's library, and others played at chess, cards, or backgammon from morning to night. Some of the more active spirits played "shuffle-boards," which kept the deck in an uproar; while others enjoyed the dolce far niente in their berths, except when the bell summoned to meals. There were weather- wise people, who smoked round the funnel all ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... you smile. The second Miss Jefferies was to go to a ball yesterday at Hampton-court with Lady Sophia Thomas's daughters. The news came, and your aunt Cosby said the girl must not go to it. The poor child then cried in earnest. Lady Sophia went to intercede for her, and found her grandmother at backgammon, who would hear no entreaties. Lady Sophia represented that Miss Jefferies was but a second cousin, and could not have been acquainted. "Oh! Madam, if there is no tenderness left in the world-cinq ace—Sir, you are ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... Like a backgammon board the place was dotted With whites and blacks, in groups on show for sale, Though rather more irregularly spotted: Some bought the jet, while others chose the pale. It chanced amongst the other people lotted,[ev] A man ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... inns of this Alpine village, the numerous travellers and boarders had disappeared one by one, weary with the excursions of the day, until no one was left in the grand salon but one English traveller playing silently at backgammon with his wife, his innumerable daughters, in brown-holland aprons with bibs, engaged in copying notices of an approaching evangelical service, and a young Swede sitting before the fireplace, in which was a good fire of blazing ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... with his sighs, behold the bird came flying with a plant in her beak, and throwing it to him, said, "Get up, Miuccio, and take courage! for you are not going to play at unload the ass' with your days, but at backgammon with the life of the dragon. Take this plant, and when you come to the cave of that horrid animal, throw it in, and instantly such a drowsiness will come over him that he will fall fast asleep; whereupon, nicking and sticking him with ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... and Laws: With Observations to make any one a Whist-Player. Containing also the Laws of Piquet, Cassino, Ecarte, Cribbage, Backgammon. By Major A. New Edition; with Precepts for Tyros, by ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... which have been done by thee. And if thou hadst made inquiry from these men concerning the habitations, the gatherings, the promises, and the broken faith of the fair-haired ladies of Connaught; hadst thou asked them concerning spear-play and sword-play; concerning skill in backgammon and chess; concerning feats with horses, and chariots of war; they would have said that never had been found the arm of a champion who could wound a hero's flesh like the arm of Ferdia; he whose colour matched the tints of the clouds: none who like thee could excite the croak of the bloody-mouthed ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... cruising grounds on our coast, and have safely arrived at the term of your journey. Your departure is not yet known, or even suspected.* Niemsevioz was much affected. He is now at the federal city. He desired me to have some things taken care of for you. There were some kitchen furniture, backgammon table, and chess men, and a pelisse of fine fur. The latter I have taken to my own apartment and had packed in hops, and sewed up; the former are put into a warehouse of Mr. Barnes; all subject to your future orders. Some letters came for you soon ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... woman may learn one useful doctrine from the game of backgammon, which is, not to take up her man ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... lacqueys, arrayed in brown and yellow, the colours of the family, who, ranged in double file, gazed in silence upon Captain Dalgetty as he passed betwixt their ranks. Another was occupied by Highland gentlemen and chiefs of small branches, who were amusing themselves with chess, backgammon, and other games, which they scarce intermitted to gaze with curiosity upon the stranger. A third was filled with Lowland gentlemen and officers, who seemed also in attendance; and, lastly, the presence-chamber of ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... and music seem to me far better occupations for home evenings than games. There is too much hard work in chess and whist and too little sociability to make them in any way desirable. Euchre and backgammon seem invented to pass away time, which is so precious to most of us that we should like to feel we had something at the end of an hour by which our lives were richer than at the beginning. Yet games have their place. Young-people have their times of liking them. If they really enjoy ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... some people!) Lord Mauleverer dined with William! What a fine thing it is for a man (it is what I never did, indeed; I like being what they call 'Cock of the Walk'—let me see, now I think of it, Pillum comes to-night to play a hit at backgammon) to make friends with a great man early in (yet Will did not do it very early, poor fellow! He struggled first with a great deal of sorrow—hardship, that is) life! It is many years now since Will has been hand-and-glove with my ('t is a bit of a puppy) ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... am grown much thinner than I was six months ago: when I look at my hands, they put me so in mind of what your dear father's were, when I saw them tremble under my eyes, as we latterly played at backgammon together." ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... with him. Luckily my Lady Viscountess did not rise till noon. Heaven help the poor waiting-woman who had charge of her toilet! I have often seen the poor wretch come out with red eyes from the closet where those long and mysterious rites of her ladyship's dress were performed, and the backgammon-box locked up with a rap on Mrs. Tusher's fingers when she played ill, or the game was going ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... do for a start," the old gentleman nodded in satisfaction. "And I'll give you some points later on about the game. Well, and you play backgammon, of course." He didn't wait for her to answer, but finished, "These people here drive me almost crazy, asking me how I feel, and what was the matter with me, and all that rubbish. Now, I'm going into the library, and you shall go too, and we'll ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... time in helping in her pursuits; he was becoming companionable to his father, and could play at chess sufficiently well to be a worthy antagonist in Mr. Kendal's scientific and interminable games. He would likewise play at backgammon with grandmamma, and could entertain her for hours together by listening to her long stories of the old Bayford world. He was a favourite in her little society, and would often take a hand at cards to make ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lively evening followed three dull days, consisting of a solitary forenoon, an afternoon walk through the squares, dinner, backgammon, and bed; the next morning, de capo al fine, and so on; a dance of existence as monotonous as that of the spheres, and not half so musical. On the fourth day, while Miss Bowen was out walking, Nathanael Harper called to take leave before his journey to ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... antiquity than any Grecian monuments. In this game, too, skill was all that was needed at first, but in time spice was given by the addition of chance, and dice (tessera, a die) were used as in backgammon; but gambling was deemed disreputable, and was forbidden during the republic, except at the time of the Saturnalia, though both Greeks and Romans permitted aged men to amuse themselves in that way. [Footnote: A gambler was called aleator, and sometimes ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... rather a curious fact that Priestley was not at the inn where the anniversary was celebrating. While the company there were chanting the praises of liberty he was at home playing backgammon with his wife, a remarkably innocent and untreasonable occupation. Mr. Arthur Young visited the scene of the riot a few days later and had thoughts upon it. 'Seeing, as I passed, a house in ruins, on inquiry I found that it was Dr. Priestley's. I alighted from my horse, and walked ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... $1.60 each, any one of the following: globe microscope, silver fruit-knife, silver napkin-ring, book or books worth $2.50. For SIX, at $1.60 each, we will give any one of the following: a silver fruit-knife (marked), silver napkin-ring, pen-knives, scissors, backgammon-board, note-paper and envelopes stamped with initials, books worth $3.00. For TEN, at $1.60 each, select any one of the following: morocco travelling-bag, stereoscope with six views, silver napkin-ring, compound microscope, ...
— The Nursery, No. 103, July, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... approve of his son Henry being a football player. He wrote that a young man ought to have a "moderate practice of running, leaping, wrestling, fencing, dancing, and playing at the caitch, or tennis, bowls, archery, pall-mall, and riding; and in foul or stormy weather, cards and backgammon, dice, chess, and billiards," but football was too rough a game for his Majesty, and "meeter for laming than making able." Stubbs also speaks of it as a "bloody and murthering practice, rather than a fellowly sport or pastime." ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... for days the family had been putting into it what might be needed, as soon as anything was thought of. Everybody stopped to see its contents. It was carefully covered with newspapers. First came out a backgammon-board. "That would be useful," said Ann Maria, "if we have to spend the afternoon in anybody's barn." Next, a pair of andirons. "What were they for?" "In case of needing a fire in the woods," explained Solomon John. Then came a volume of the Encyclopaedia. ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... gates of wood and iron that were always shut; and on each hither side of these rose an oblong dwelling of red brick, two stories high, and capable of accommodating thirty boys, sleeping or waking, at work or rest or play; for in bad weather we played indoors, or tried to, chess, draughts, backgammon, and the like—even blind-man's-buff (Colin Maillard)—even puss in ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... besides smoking and gossiping, we also played games, either chess or backgammon or munkula. This last is an exceedingly primitive and ancient game—it must date almost as far back as jackstones or knucklebones. I have seen the natives in Central Africa and the Indians in the far ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... for four or five days, and on the evening of the fifth day Captain Broughton and his aunt drank tea at the parsonage. Nothing very especial occurred; but as the parson and Miss La Smyrger insisted on playing backgammon with devoted perseverance during the whole evening, Broughton had a good opportunity of saying a word or two about those changes in his lady-love which a life in London would require—and some word ...
— The Parson's Daughter of Oxney Colne • Anthony Trollope
... His explanation is that Johnson irritated him by an allusion to his being beaten by Omai, the Sandwich Islander, at chess. Mrs. Piozzi's marginal note on Omai is: "When Omai played at chess and at backgammon with Baretti, everybody admired at the savage's good breeding and at the European's ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... personal enemy. She had accustomed herself very quickly to life in the prison to which she had been transferred in 1813. The rules were not very strict for those inmates who had a little money to spend; she received visitors, sent to Tournebut for her backgammon-board and her book of rules, and ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... gait, his arms crooked outwards, treading much on his toes. His conversation is about the theatre, where he has a season ticket,—about an amateur who lately appeared there, and about actresses, with other theatrical scandal.—In the smoking-room, two checker and backgammon boards; the landlord a great player, seemingly a stupid man, but with considerable shrewdness and knowledge of the world.—F———, the comedian, a stout, heavy-looking Englishman, of grave deportment, with no signs of wit or humor, yet aiming at both in conversation, in order to support ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with all possible respect for her Majesty's naval officers, while on duty,—there was, by this time, hardly a sober man on deck or in the cabin except myself and the Spanish captain, who left me to engage the prize-officer in a game of backgammon or dominoes. The crew was dozing about the decks, or nodding over the taffrail, while my colleague, the boatswain, prepared an oar on the forecastle to assist me in reaching ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... be arranged which Eirik wished to promote. However, I will not now speak at length how this marriage took place; the Yule festival was prolonged and made into a marriage-feast. Great joy was there in Brattahlid during the winter. Much playing at backgammon and telling of stories went on, and many things were done that ministered to the comfort of ...
— Eirik the Red's Saga • Anonymous
... mood:—how "Rose and Adele are as thick as ever, and Adele comes up pretty often to pass an evening,—glad enough, I guess, to get away from Aunt Eliza,—and I see her home, of course. She plays a stiff game of backgammon; she never throws but she makes a point; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... done, in a rollickin' run Wid the rod or the gun he's the foremost to figure; Be Jupiter Ammon! what jack-snipe or salmon E'er rose to backgammon his tail-fly or trigger! And hark that view-holloa! 'Tis Mack in full follow On black "Faugh-a-ballagh" the country-side sailin'! Och, but you'd think 'twas ould Nimrod in pink, Wid his spurs cryin' chink ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... remounted and ridden at once to Corbyknowe, but feared leaving her. She shut herself in her room till she could bear her own company no longer, and then went to the drawing-room, where Francis read to her, and played several games of backgammon with her. Soon after dinner she retired, saying her ride had wearied her; and the moment Francis knew she was in bed, he got his horse, and ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... Adam or Eve," said the Comte de Kergarouet. "Trusting to that crazy child's tact, I got him here by a method of my own. I know that the boy shoots with a pistol to admiration, hunts well, plays wonderfully at billiards, at chess, and at backgammon; he handles the foils, and rides a horse like the late Chevalier de Saint-Georges. He has a thorough knowledge of all our vintages. He is as good an arithmetician as Bareme, draws, dances, and sings well. The devil's in it! what more do you want? If that is not a perfect gentleman, find me a ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... Wives beleeve that they are sent for into this or t'other Alehouse or Tavern, about an Excise-mans business; or to write a Will, or a Contract of agreement of Merchandize; though it be to no other end or purpose then to have a perfect knowledge who plaies best at Ticktack, Irish, Backgammon, Passage, or All-fours. From thence then they cannot come before it be late in the night, and have learnt there to make a Scotch Will so wel, that they are, by two witnesses, half carried, and half trail'd home to their houses; bragging ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... Chatelet's" counsels, determined to erect a rival altar by receiving on Wednesdays. Now Mme. de Bargeton's salon was open every evening; and those who frequented it were so wedded to their ways, so accustomed to meet about the same tables, to play the familiar game of backgammon, to see the same faces and the same candle sconces night after night; and afterwards to cloak and shawl, and put on overshoes and hats in the old corridor, that they were quite as much attached to the steps of the staircase as to the mistress ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... might be translated by the more familiar names of trictrac, or backgammon, was a favorite amusement of the gravest Romans; and old Mucius Scaevola, the lawyer, had the reputation of a very skilful player. It was called ludus duodecim scriptorum, from the twelve scripta, or lines, which equally divided the alvevolus or table. On these, the two armies, the white ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... week she had allowed herself in which to think it over, lengthened to ten days before she began to write her letter. She sat down at her desk late in the afternoon, but by tea-time she had done nothing more than tear up half a dozen beginnings. After supper David rattled the backgammon-board significantly. ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... give tea-parties often; the preparations upset them, and when their guests were gone they felt themselves exhausted. They preferred to have tea by themselves, and after tea they played backgammon. Mrs. Carey arranged that her husband should win, because he did not like losing. They had cold supper at eight. It was a scrappy meal because Mary Ann resented getting anything ready after tea, and Mrs. Carey helped to clear ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... welcome to them because some of the most unscrupulous and most successful of the new race of gamesters were men in sad coloured clothes and lank hair, men who called cards the Devil's books, men who thought it a sin and a scandal to win or lose twopence over a backgammon board. It was in the last drama of Shadwell that the hypocrisy and knavery of these speculators was, for the first time, exposed to public ridicule. He died in November 1692, just before his Stockjobbers came on the stage; and the epilogue was spoken by an actor dressed in deep ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... said the Baron de Besenval to Lord Adhemar, with whom he was playing a game of backgammon in the saloon, "did you notice the tableau that the queen is presenting, taking for her theme a group ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... says Thoreau, "is a sort of gaming, like checkers, or backgammon, a playing with right and wrong; its obligation never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right thing is doing nothing for it. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority." A close examination of ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... this sophistication was frankly avowed. Philosophy discredited itself; but a man of parts, who loved intellectual games even better than backgammon, might take a hand with the wits and historians of his day, until the clock struck twelve and the party was over. Even in Kant, though the mood was more cramped and earnest, the mystical sophistication ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... hard she found it that evening to remain playing backgammon with the general, when the rest went out of the room. Going to attend those services to which she had been accustomed in the house of her father; and after which, during her stay here, her heart had so often yearned; ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... And he put off his clothes and gave them to her, saying, 'Take them and may God not bless them to thee!' The Khalif ordered him fresh clothes and said to Taweddud, 'There is one thing left of that for which thou didst engage, namely, chess.' And he sent for professors of chess and draughts and backgammon. The chess-player sat down before her, and they set the pieces, and he moved and she moved; but, every move he made she speedily countered, till she beat him and he found himself check-mated. Quoth ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... the dresser. Over this shelf hung a fishing-rod, unscrewed and neatly tied up; and upon the top of the other books lay one bound with red cloth, in which he kept his flies. On one side of the window sills lay a backgammon box, with which his wife and himself amused themselves for an hour or two every evening; and fixed in recesses intended for the purpose, Sam Roberts, for such was his name, having built the house himself, were comfortable cupboards filled ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... forgotten. It was indeed a book well fitted to lie on the hall table of a Squire whose religion consisted in hating extemporaneous prayer and nasal psalmody. On a rainy day, when it was impossible to hunt or shoot, neither the card table nor the backgammon board would have been, in the intervals of the flagon and the pasty, so agreeable a resource. Nowhere else, perhaps, can be found, in so small a compass, so large a collection of ludicrous quotations and anecdotes. Some grave men, however, who bore no love to the Calvinistic doctrine or discipline, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... formerly presented. Two or three burghers husbanded their "dribbles o' brandy;" two or three dragoons lounged over their muddy ale, and cursed the inactive times that allowed them no better cheer. Their cornet did not, indeed, play at backgammon with the curate in his cassock, but he drank a little modicum of aqua mirabilis with the grey-cloaked Presbyterian minister. The scene was another, and yet the same, differing only in persons, but corresponding ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... which enables the individual to be at once a vegetarian, a golfer, a vestryman, a blond, a mammal, a Democrat, and an immortal spirit. As a rational person, one may debonairly consider The Certain Hour possesses as large license to look like a volume of short stories as, say, a backgammon-board has to its customary guise of a two-volume history; but as an average-novel-reader, one must vote otherwise. As an average-novel-reader, one must condemn the very book which, as a seasoned scribbler, one ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... some of us "wee bodies" could also do something in that way, and our musical soirees, if not in melody, could at least compete in noise, numbers taken into account, with any association of the kind in the British dominions. Chess, backgammon, and whist, completed the variety of our evening pastimes. In the daytime each individual occupied himself as he pleased. When together, smoking, "spinning yarns" about dog racing, canoe sailing, and l'amour; ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... difficulty, one is obliged to confront the fact that no one amusement presents a similar temptation to abuse to all alike. That in which the slightest indulgence might tend to lead one man to ruinous excess, excites no interest in another. It might possibly be dangerous for one man to play at backgammon, while to another it would prove no amusement, but only a tedious method of killing time. On this ground, in short, it is utterly impossible to adjust this matter satisfactorily or consistently. The only consistent or safe rule in this view of the case, is rigorously to exclude all, because ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... from the glossary to the Welch Laws that the game of backgammon was invented in Wales, sometime before the reign of Canute the Great, and that it derived its name from Back, which in the welch language meant little, and Cammon, which in the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... also ordered to be removed. In 1843 the reading-rooms for the male and female patients were completed, and a library containing two hundred volumes was supplied by the kindness of the treasurer; an amusement fund was established for the purchase of bagatelle and backgammon boards, and other games for the use of the patients. In 1845 the hospital came under the provisions of the Lunacy Act (8 and 9 Vict., c. 100). Since the Lunacy Act of that year, the affairs of the hospital have been subjected to the control ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... spent at Fasque. An observant eye followed political affairs, but hardly a word is said about them in the diary. A stiff battle was kept up against electioneering iniquities at Newark. Riding, boating, shooting were Mr. Gladstone's pastimes in the day; billiards, singing, backgammon, and a rubber in the evening. Sport was not without compunction which might well, in an age that counts itself humane, be expected to come oftener. 'Had to kill a wounded partridge,' he records, 'and felt after ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... (vol. ii. 314.) Here it would mean a rude form of tables or backgammon, in which the players who throw certain numbers are dubbed Sultan and Wazir, and demean themselves accordingly. A favourite bit of fun with Cairene boys of a past generation was to "make a Pasha;" and for this proceeding, see ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... education can be opened without the teacher thereof has been duly licensed. No game of chance is allowed in any shop or tavern, except in billiard-saloons and coffee-houses, where draughts and dominoes, chess and backgammon are tolerated. After a certain fixed hour of the night, no person is allowed to drive about in a Volante with the head up, unless it rains or the sitter be an invalid; the penalty is fifteen shillings. No private individual is allowed to give a ball or a concert without permission ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... soon as we've finished our game." Marjorie looked up from the backgammon board at which she and Mary were seated. It had always been a favorite game with them and Marjorie had proposed playing to relieve the curious sensation of apprehension that was gradually settling down ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... which are made in quest of similar gratifications; and they would render two hours of every twenty-four a period of enjoyment to tens of thousands, who now enjoy no relief from gloomy cares, except at the public-house, the card-table, or the backgammon-board. It would, moreover, be a cheap pleasure, supported by a rate of half-a-guinea per house per annum, while it would afford at least 1000 hours of innocent and healthful gratification to their families. To enumerate all the direct and collateral advantages must be unnecessary, ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... to task once or twice about the propriety of playing at backgammon with Sir Pitt, saying that it was a godless amusement, and that she would be much better engaged in reading "Thrump's Legacy," or "The Blind Washerwoman of Moorfields," or any work of a more serious nature; but Miss Sharp said her dear mother used often to play the same ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hard, and round it is wound a little conical tuft of tree-cotton, the silky covering of the bomba, so as exactly to fill up the bore of the tube. They are carried in a quiver, which holds some hundreds. It is in shape somewhat like a backgammon dice-box, formed of basketwork, and covered with a piece of the skin of the tapir. To it is attached a bunch of silk-grass, a small piece of bone for scratching the point of the arrows, and a basket ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... affection—as that you crawled as a child on the same turf with them. I pass over the grass which you first trod, the river you first swam, the woods you broke through in hunting. I leave out the fact that it was here you first played ball[67] and backgammon,[68] that you hawked, coursed, rode, shot with the bow. I omit the fact that for the sake of your boyish presence students of letters came hither from all parts; and that it was due to you as an individual that our nobility, anxious to shed ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... fancy needlework often forms a portion of the evening's recreation for the ladies of the household, and this may be varied by an occasional game at chess or backgammon. It has often been remarked, too, that nothing is more delightful to the feminine members of a family, than the reading aloud of some good standard work or amusing publication. A knowledge of polite literature may be thus obtained by the whole family, especially if ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... credit for bringing such a fine young fellow in his company, and a second instalment of reputation from outshining him in conversation. This was rather nice calculating, but Murray Bradshaw always calculated. With most men life is like backgammon, half skill, and half luck, but with him it was like chess. He never pushed a pawn without reckoning the cost, and when his mind was least busy it was sure to be half a dozen moves ahead of the game as it ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... out a backgammon board, and proposed to Harry to play. If there would have been anything to read Harry would have preferred entertaining himself in that way, but Mr. Fox didn't appear to be literary. There were a few books in the house, but they were ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... table had been cleared away, Mr. Ravis and Stanley reading the papers, the one smoking his cigar, the other his pipe; Mrs. Ravis, with the magazines and Turner with the Chautauquan. Howard and Virginia appropriated the table to themselves where they played with their soldiers and backgammon board. ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... talking, Augustine. I believe we've been round and round this old track five hundred times, more or less. What do you say to a game of backgammon?" ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Mr. Parker looked around him for some means of passing the time. The newspapers were read through; it still rained heavily without; he could not ask his wife to play a game at backgammon. ...
— The Last Penny and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... I am slightly acquainted, lost in the Argyle Rooms several thousand pounds at Backgammon.[A] It is but justice to the manager in this instance to say, that some degree of disapprobation was manifested: but why are the implements of gaming allowed in a place devoted to the society of both sexes? A pleasant thing for the wives and daughters of those who ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... tete-a-tete with Dr. Redgill; and, strange as it may seem, neither in a sullen nor melancholy mood. But after a single sigh, as the carriage drove off, she sat down with a cheerful countenance to play backgammon with the Doctor. ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... requiring a distinct account of the prisoner, a credible witness deposed, "that he always rose at ten of the clock, played with his cat till twelve, smoked tobacco till one, was at dinner till two, then took another pipe, played at backgammon till six, talked of one Madame Frances, an old mistress of his, till eight, repeated the same account at the tavern till ten, then returned home, took the other pipe, and then to bed." I asked him, "what he had to say for himself?"—"As ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... in. deep (all inside measurements), glue up all but the front piece (4 in. wide by 20 in. long), which merely tie in its place whilst glueing up the others. Cut the box when dry through the 4 in. back piece to exactly halve it. Hinge each half with strong hinges. It now resembles an open backgammon board box, without its ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... table to be removed; and sometimes, with the music master's assistance, the girls would give us a very agreeable concert. Walking out, drinking tea, country dances, and forfeits, shortened the rest of the day, without the assistance of cards, as I hated all manner of gaming, except backgammon, at which my old friend and I sometimes took a two-penny hit. Nor can I here pass over an ominous circumstance that happened the last time we played together: I only wanted to fling a quatre, and yet I threw deuce ace five times running. Some months were elapsed in this manner, till at last it was ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... the Egyptologist, apparently no chess player himself, in describing the sedentary games of Egypt, says that the people of that country take great pleasure in chess, (which they call Sutreng), Draughts (Dameh), and Backgammon (Tawooleh). ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... pile of ordinary pennies, the slight lateral play allowed by the rivet aiding the illusion. A little leather cap (shaped something like a fez, with a little button on the top, and of such size as to fit loosely over the pile of cents) with an ordinary die, such as backgammon is played with, ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... way to pass the long hours of convalescence, is by playing games with your patient. I am sure no training school for nurses has added the study of cribbage, pinochle, bezique, chess, checkers, backgammon, or dominos to its curriculum. All these are two-handed games, the playing of which will help the convalescent to forget himself and his past illness and present weakness. The nurse, if she knows only one game that is unfamiliar to the patient, gives him ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... Sometimes dominos and backgammon were introduced, and at length were played for a slight stake. To participate in this Thomas refused, on the plea that he did not know enough of the games to risk anything. He had not the moral courage to declare that he considered it wrong ...
— No and Other Stories Compiled by Uncle Humphrey • Various
... every morning. Sometimes she will not want you, in which case you will be at liberty till after breakfast. Should she want you it will probably be to read to her while she sips her chocolate, or it may be to play a game of backgammon with her before she gets up. A little later on you will be able to steal an hour or so for yourself, as while her ladyship is undergoing the elaborate processes of the toilette, your services will not be required. On coming down, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... at the only times Darwin had for relaxation, he was quite unfitted for these higher delights. We are not surprised then to learn that he sought and found relief in listening to his wife's reading of some pleasant novel or in the nightly game of backgammon, as the only means of ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... a drum-major was playing at backgammon with the landlord of the cafe in his shirt-sleeves. On every side voices could be heard calling out and answering each other, with the rolling ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... the grand sources of amusement are dice and drafts, along with backgammon and billiards. The latter two games are confined to the upper and middle classes. Most of the upper classes, I believe, have billiard-rooms at home, for family use and conversazione-party amusement. In the absence of newspapers, journals, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... jackpot; deck. [hands at poker: list] pair, two pair, three of a kind, straight, flush, full-house, four of a kind, royal flush; misere &c. [board games: list] chess, draughts, checkers, checquers, backgammon, dominos, merelles[obs3], nine men's morris, go bang, solitaire; game of fox and goose; monopoly; loto &c. [obs3] scrabble[word games: list], scribbage, boggle, crossword puzzle, hangman. morra[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... spotted paper to examine for some object of mere curiosity. It was certainly odd that the one the Fagan woman had seen should present three spots so like those on the other paper, but people did sometimes throw treys at backgammon, and that which not rarely happened with two dice of six faces might happen if they had sixty or six hundred faces. On the whole, he did not see that there was any ground, so far, for anything more than a vague suspicion. He thought it not unlikely ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... from each other. The business of life, according to him, was to drill and to be drilled. The recreations suited to a prince, were to sit in a cloud of tobacco smoke, to sip Swedish beer between the puffs of the pipe, to play backgammon for three halfpence a rubber, to kill wild hogs, and to shoot partridges by the thousand. The Prince Royal showed little inclination either for the serious employments or for the amusements of his father. He shirked ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Khesib, I will make my father reward thee!" "May the day never come on which evil shall befall thee," answered I, "and may God appoint my last day before thine!" Then I set on food and we ate, and I made ready perfumes with which he scented himself. Moreover, I made him a backgammon board[FN41], and we played and ate sweetmeats and played again till nightfall when I rose and lighting the lamps, set on food; and we ate and sat talking till the night was far spent. Then he lay down to sleep and I covered him up and ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... Doctor sat down to a game of backgammon, and Charley and I continued the conversation ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... adversary's between two of his own, in which case he removes it, and is entitled to continue moving till he can no longer take. It is a game of some skill, and perpetual practice enables the Somal to play it as the Persians do backgammon, with great art and little reflection. The game is called Kurkabod when, as in our draughts, the piece passing over one of the ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... we keep a card hung up on Lilias's window-shutter, and we write down every month's invitations—in stormy weather they are not many—and we fulfil them in rotation. You don't often want me in the evenings, for you've quite given me up at chess, and you only condescend to backgammon when it is mid-winter and there has been no curling, and the book club is all amiss. Lilias insists upon the card, because the parties are by no means always merry affairs, and she says that otherwise we would slip them off on each other, and pick and ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... the chapter. On the whole, she thought it might be better for her to go to bed early, and take some warm drink. "It would never do for me to be laid up, with these children coming to be seen after!" she declared. So she departed, and Margaret and her uncle sat down to a game of backgammon, and played slowly and peacefully, lingering over their moves as long as they pleased, and tasting the pleasure of having no one say that they should play ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... have shot at seals, and almost hit them in the most admirable manner; we have hunted for an indubitable polar bear,—and found a dog and a midnight mystification; we have played at chess, euchre, backgammon, whist, debating-club, story-telling, nightmare,—one of our number developing an incomparable genius for the last; we have played at getting tolerable cooking out of two slovens, one of whom knows nothing, and the other everything but his business,—and have lost the game; we have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... read, and where heavy-bearded men—Anarchists, you hope, but piano-builders, you fear—would sit for three hours over their dinner Talking, Talking, TALKING. Then for another hour they would play backgammon, and at last roll out, blasphemously, to the darkened street, and so Home to those mysterious lodgings about Broad ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... words; I should call it an attack;—most men would so call an endeavour to take away from a man every shilling of income that he has to live upon; but it sha'n't be an attack, if you don't like it; you wish to abandon this—this little game of backgammon you've ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... windows from which the music came, liked to hear it? When Pen's bed-time came the songs were hushed. Lights appeared in the upper room: his room, whither the widow used to conduct him; and then the major and Mr. Warrington, and sometimes Miss Laura, would have a game at ecarte or backgammon; or she would sit by working a pair of slippers in worsted—a pair of gentleman's slippers—they might have been for Arthur, or for George, or for Major Pendennis: one of those three would have given any ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... heavy burden; neither Emily nor Lily could like needlework; they could have no music, for the piano at the other end of the room seemed to be in an Arctic Region, and they did little but read novels and childish stories, and play at chess or backgammon. Jane was the best off. Mrs. Weston sent her a little sock, with a request that she would make out the way in which it was knit, in a complicated feathery pattern, and in puzzling over her cotton, taking stitches up and letting them down, she made the ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... games of backgammon with Mrs. Norton; talked till two in the morning to John of literature, and deplored the burning of the poems, and besought him to write them again, and to submit them, if need be, to a bishop. He worked hard to obliterate ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... something distinctly tangible. Somebody had been taking liberties with her wardrobe. Somebody had been hanging some one else's clothes in her closet. She hastily slipped on her dress again and marched straight down to the parlour. The people were seated there; the widow and the minister were playing backgammon. The librarian was watching them. Miss Amanda Gill was mending beside the large lamp on the centre table. They all looked up with amazement as Louisa Stark entered. There was something strange in her expression. She noticed none of ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... with the feeling of duty prosperously fulfilled. To make this dear old man happy, to be his companion and friend, to share in his rides and rambles, and of an evening to play the games he loved on the old shovel-board in the hall, or an old-fashioned game at cards, or backgammon beside the fire in the panelled parlour, reconciled her to the melancholy of an existence from which hope had vanished like a light extinguished. It seemed to her as if she had dropped back into the old life with her great-aunt. The Manor House was just a little gayer ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... backgammon, Chinese cards and dice, afford a continual diversion to both sexes at the court, and there are many skilful players among them. The Chinese have established a sort of "lottery," of which they have the monopoly. It is little ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... eighteen or twenty of those gentlemen who would have the honour to sup with me. I approached one of the tables where they were playing, and thought I should have died with laughing: I expected to have seen good company and deep play; but I only met with two Germans playing at backgammon. Never did two country boobies play like them; but their figures beggared all description. The fellow near whom I stood was short, thick, and fat, and as round as a ball, with a ruff, and prodigious high crowned hat. Any one, at a moderate distance, would have taken him for ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... noblemen, during their many hours of dolce far niente, often indulge in games of chess, backgammon and checkers, and teach these games to their sons as part of a gentleman's accomplishments. Cards, besides being forbidden by order of the king, are considered vulgar and a low amusement only fit for the lowest people. The soldiers indulge much in card-playing and ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... leaves smelt of saw-dust; till at last I drank some water, and went at it again. But soon I had to give it up for lost work; and thought that the old backgammon board, we had at home, lettered on the back, "The History of Rome" was quite as full of matter, and a great deal more entertaining. I wondered whether Mr. Jones had ever read the volume himself; and could not help remembering, that ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... rapture had somewhat subsided, Cousin Mary proposed that they should try some games, by way of variety. Chess, checkers, backgammon, Chinese puzzles, dominoes, jack-straws, etc., were mentioned, and each one of them was declared by different members of the group to be exceedingly entertaining; but Charlie Bolton said that "although he was neither Grand Turk nor perpetual ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... the far corner of the room and watched every move we made. When the coffee was brought I sat smoking and surly over it, as if my head ached from the day's drink; Grim and Jeremy, aching for sleep but refusing like good artists to neglect a detail of their part, went to another table and played backgammon, betting quarrelsomely; and at last one of the five men walked over and touched Yussuf Dakmar's shoulder. At once he followed all five of them out of the room, whereat Grim and Jeremy promptly went to bed. It was so obviously my turn to stay awake that Grim didn't even trouble ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... we will give any one of the following: any Yearly Volume of The Nursery, Oxford's Senior Speaker, Sargent's Original Dialogues, a nice gilt Shakspeare, any one of the Standard Poets, any book worth $1.50, a Backgammon-Board, a ...
— The Nursery, No. 169, January, 1881, Vol. XXIX - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... clothes." Quoth he, "Leave me my bag-trousers, so Allah repay thee;" and he swore by Allah that he would contend with none, so long as Tawaddud abode in the realm of Baghdad. Then he stripped off his clothes and gave them to her and went away. Thereupon came the backgammon-player, and she said to him, "If I beat thee, this day, what wilt thou give me?" Quoth he, "I will give thee ten suits of brocade of Constantinople, figured with gold, and ten suits of velvet and a thousand gold pieces; and if I beat thee, I ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... underground hall, broken up with sturdy square pillars, and brilliant with mirrors which line walls and pillars in every direction. Here are gathered a great number of men and women, sitting at the tables, drinking beer and wine, playing cards, dominoes and backgammon, and filling the air with the incessant din of conversation and the smoke of pipes and cigars. The women are generally bareheaded or in muslin caps. The men are almost without exception in blouses—some white, some black, some ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... warning you. Fetch the backgammon board; your mother has won seven games and I nine ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... house on the first day of the week shall always be kept closed from public use." It is further covenanted that "under a penalty of L100 he will not allow or suffer any person to use, or play at, or divert themselves with cards, dice, backgammon, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... so. This would be in the year 1878, after he had been eight or nine years in England. He begged my father to let me live with him and he was very kind to me in his way. When he was sober he used to be fond of playing backgammon and draughts with me, and he would make me his representative both with the servants and with the tradespeople, so that by the time that I was sixteen I was quite master of the house. I kept all the keys and could go where I liked and do what I liked, so long as I did not disturb ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... 'Pam', that Kings and Queens o'erthrew, And mow'd down armies in the fights of Lu; and Colman's epilogue to 'The School for Scandal', 1777:— And at backgammon mortify my soul, That pants for 'loo', or ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... recovered from his confusion, and was apparently on good terms with his messmates. He spent the afternoon in walking about the camp; watching some raw recruits at their drill; watching others playing cards, or checkers, or backgammon; getting acquainted, and learning the ways of ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... of another Singapore oyster; Murtagh started along the bank of the stream, in the hope of beguiling some of the red and gold fish he saw playing "backgammon" in it, as he had seen the trout and salmon in his native Killarney; while the captain, having procured a rifle, that had been brought away in the boat, and which he well knew how to handle, wandered ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... than if they had been occupied, I did not feel so friendless as I might have done, and dreamed all night that Marjory was teaching me something I understood to be cricket, which, however, was more like a bloated kind of backgammon. ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... village about ten miles distant;—a good-natured accommodating divine, who was always most obligingly ready to take a dinner and a bed at the house of any country gentleman in distress for a companion. Nothing came amiss to him,—a game at billiards, at chess, at draughts, at backgammon, at piquet, or at all-fours in a tete-a-tete,—or any game on the cards, round, square, or triangular, in a party of any number exceeding two. He would even dance among friends, rather than that a lady, even if she were on the wrong side of thirty, should sit still for want ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... Mr. Brooke. "Get Dorothea to play backgammon with you in the evenings. And shuttlecock, now—I don't know a finer game than shuttlecock for the daytime. I remember it all the fashion. To be sure, your eyes might not stand that, Casaubon. But you must unbend, you know. Why, you might take ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... bet ye;" and catching deaf Mr. Hollar's eye, the Captain nodded, and pointed to the little table beside him, and made a gesture imitative of the rattling of a dice-box; at which that quiet old gentleman also nodded sunnily; and up got the Captain and conveyed the backgammon-box to the table, near Hollar's elbow, and the two worthies were soon sinc-ducing and catre-acing, with the pleasant clatter that accompanies that ancient game. Hollar had thrown sizes and made his double point, and the honest Captain, who could stand many things better ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... at Court were: gathering sweet-flag in summer and comparing the length of its roots, hawking, fan-lotteries, a kind of backgammon called sugoroku, and different forms of gambling. Football was played, a Chinese game in which the winner was he who kicked the ball highest and kept it longest from touching ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the various exported marrying-maidens and transported civil officers, who constitute the average bulk of Indian cargoes outward bound, Charles mixed but little in their society, seldom danced, seldom smoked, seldom took a hand at whist, or engaged in the conflicts of backgammon. Sharks, storms, water-spouts; the meeting divers vessels, and exchanging post-bags; tar-barrelled Neptune of the line, Cape Town with its mountain and the Table-cloth, long-rolling seas; and similar common-places, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... them that is thrilling or exciting or large or luminous or magical? I would pile up the whole lot of them along with those books that are no books—biblia-a-biblia—of which Charles Lamb speaks so plaintively. Backgammon boards with lettering behind ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... entertainment. Another has a library, reading-room, and a printing-press, which strikes off a weekly newspaper, in which are a serial story, poetry, and many profound and moral reflections. The men play cards and backgammon, read, write, smoke, and tell marvellous stories, commencing, "It wasn't fairly day, and we were hardly wide enough awake to tell a tree-stump from a gray coat,"—or, "When we saw them coming, we first formed in square, corner towards them you know, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... ornamented with black velvet, together with curtains of black stuff and a figured coverlet. A wainscot cupboard displayed its curiously-carved doors, near to which hung two pictures, or tables as they were called, representing the fair Lucretia and Mary Magdalen. A backgammon-board lay on the window-seat; three shining tall-backed, oaken chairs, with a table of the same well-wrought material, and irons beautifully embossed, and a striped Turkey rug, formed a sumptuous catalogue, when we consider the manner ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... such trifles," they said. "We will find you some place less cold and dismal than Mademoiselle Gamard's gloomy house. If we can't find anything you like, one or other of us will take you to live with us. Come, let's play a game of backgammon. To-morrow you can go and see the Abbe Troubert and ask him to push your claims to the canonry, and you'll see how cordially ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... him to Seville for the tournaments and forgiving him for all their mutual injuries with every caressing circumstance. One reads that after the king has kissed him he sits down again to his game of backgammon and Don Fadrique goes into the next room to Maria do Padilla, the lovely and gentle lady whom Don Pedro has married as much as he can with a wedded wife shut up in Toledo. She sits there in terror ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... loss of independence, and to the Doctor a greater loss in the neighbourhood of the Cathedral and its library; for after the first year or two, as Lady Archfield grew rheumatic, and Sir Philip had his old friend to play backgammon and read the Weekly Gazette, they became unwilling to make the move to Winchester, and generally stayed at ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Haparanda, and our detention was therefore by no means irksome. A large room, carpeted, protected from the outer cold by double windows, and heated by an immense Russian stove, was allotted to us. We had two beds, one of which became a broad sofa during the day, a backgammon table, the ordinary appliances for washing, and, besides a number of engravings on the walls, our window commanded a full view of Tornea, and the ice-track across the river, where hundreds of persons daily passed to and fro. The eastern window showed us the Arctic dawn, growing and brightening through ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... quite off his sports," said Will Badger; "hath neither touched backgammon or shovel-board, nor looked on the big book of harrowtry wi' Master Mumblazen. I let the clock run down, thinking the missing the bell might somewhat move him—for you know, Master Edmund, he was particular in counting time—but he never ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott |
