"Shuttlecock" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a loss. 'You may let the procession go on,' he smilingly replied. 'I have just obtained permission, by special revelation, to proceed with it.' His leisure hours he spent in the writing of edifying novels, the composition of acrostics in Latin Verse, and in playing battledore and shuttlecock with his little nieces. There was, indeed, only one point in which he resembled Bishop Blougram—his love of a good table. Some of Newman's disciples were astonished and grieved to find that he sat ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... exciting; a ball was driven backwards and forwards, over hills, dales, hedges, and ditches, through bushes, briars, mires, plashes, and rivers, until at length the wished-for goal was gained. Battledore and shuttlecock were favourite games for the girls, which they ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... the boy lessons in writing, and copied, at the king's desire, passages from the works of Montesquieu and others, for the use of the Dauphin. Then Clery took Louis to his aunt's room, where they played at ball, and battledore and shuttlecock, till Louis's supper-time, at eight o'clock. Meanwhile the queen and the Princess Elizabeth read aloud, till eight o'clock, when they went to Louis, to sit beside him while he had his supper. Then the king amused the children ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... his sisters' games began to bore him. His strong arms no longer wanted to play battledore and shuttlecock, they longed to throw stones. The squabbles over a petty game of croquet, which demanded neither muscle nor ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... Hobb, a handloom weaver, browt his slay boards, and as he wur goin' daan th' hill he did mak sum manoevures yo mind, for talk abaat fugal men i' th' army wen thay throw thair guns up into th' air an' catches em agean, thay wur nowt ta Joe, for he span his slay boards up an' daan just like a shuttlecock. But wal this wur goin' on th' storm began to abate, and th' water seemed to get less, but still thay kept at it. Wal at last a chap at thay called Dave Twirler shaated aat at he saw summat, and thay look't way at he pointed, and thare ...
— Th' History o' Haworth Railway - fra' th' beginnin' to th' end, wi' an ackaant o' th' oppnin' serrimony • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... have any part, in her future life. He too was dead and passed away, like her father. Lady Mabel's husband, the master of Briarwood in esse, and of Ashbourne in posse, was quite a different being from the rough lad with whom she had played at battledore and shuttlecock, billiards, croquet, and rounders. ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... consciences for voting "no" by saying that the women of their family and acquaintance do not want it. Thus is the most valuable of human rights—the right of individual representation—made the football of Legislatures, the shuttlecock of voters, kicked and tossed like the veriest plaything in utter disregard of the vital fact that it is the one principle above all others on ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... criticism of our time and civilization in an argument or essay, the world would have received it very differently. As an intellectual statement or proposition, we could have played with it and tossed it about as a ball in a game of shuttlecock, and dropped it when we tired of it, as we do other criticism. But he gave it to us as a man, as a personality, and we find it too strong for us. It is easier to deal with a theory than with the concrete reality. A man is a summons ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... obliged to trust him with much before we see his conduct, and if he does not prove as you may expect, you may turn him off whenever you please." "I believe," said my husband, "he has been ingenuous in his relation to me; and as a man who has seen great variety of life, and may have been the shuttlecock of fortune, the butt of envy, and the mark of malice, I will hire him when he comes to me here anon, as ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... bewilderment which had been in his mind for weeks past; he loved this bright young creature with the whole force of his rugged nature, and began dimly to comprehend that she cared no more for him or his sufferings than if his heart had been a football or shuttlecock. ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... of pasteboard, shrimps and crabs, do all coldly furnish forth the lunch-table as favors and bonbonnieres. Then come plaster or pasteboard gondolas, skiffs, wherries, steamships, and ferry-boats, all made with wondrous skill and freighted with caramels. Imitation rackets, battledoor and shuttlecock, hoops and sticks, castanets, cup and ball, tambourines, guitars, violins, hand-organs, banjos, and drums, all have their ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... Captain Bertram next to herself by the coffee-tray, and had planted Matty at his other side, so that he was in a measure hemmed in, and if he did not talk to Matty had no one to fall back on but herself, who, of course, would quickly, using the metaphor of battledore and shuttlecock, toss him back to her daughter—having arranged all this, what should Bell do but put his ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... cards, on the other hand, are very common, the favourite games being those in which almost everything is left to chance. As to open-air amusements, youths of the baser sort indulge in battledore and shuttlecock without the battledore, and every resident in China must have admired the skill with which the foot is used instead, at this foot-shuttlecock game. Twirling heavy bars round the body, and gymnastics generally, are practised by the coolie and horse-boy classes; but the disciple ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... with true Eastern proclivities, warmly admires that portion of the English system which Englishmen generally tolerate as a necessary evil, but of which they are by no means proud. Most thinking men in this country resent the idea of Indian interests being made a shuttlecock in the strife of party. Not so Mr. Mallik. He shudders at the idea of Indian affairs being considered exclusively on their own merits. "If it is no party's duty to champion the cause of any part of the Empire, that part must be made ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... diminish the public contempt; on the other, we have the ill-assorted fragments of a worn-out minority; Mr. Windham with his coat twice turned, and my Lord Grenville who perhaps has more sense than he can make good use of; between the two and the shuttlecock of both, a Sidmouth, and the general football Sir F. Burdett, kicked at by all, and owned ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... line must be drawn there. If the charges against him were sustained, he might stay but a day; if not, his term should be extended beyond the original commission. A new commission was given him, and back he went; but this shuttlecock experience seems to have quelled his spirit, and we hear no more of quarrels with the Virginia council. Wyatt relieved him in 1639; and in 1642 came Sir William Berkeley. This man, who was born about the ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... The Shuttlecock's a handsome fowl to see, His feathers grow straight upward like a tree. He cannot crow, but oftentimes his flight Will reach up to a most astounding height. He is a gamecock, and, in fighting trim, There are not many ...
— A Phenomenal Fauna • Carolyn Wells
... lemon trees, and in the centre of the grass-plot stood a tub yet huger, holding an enormous aloe, The hall itself, to my fancy then lofty and wide as a cathedral would seem now, was a famous place for battledore and shuttlecock; and behind was a garden, equal to that of old Alcinous himself. My favourite walk was one of turf by a long straight pond, bordered with lime-trees. But the whole demesne was the fairy ground of my childhood; and its presiding genius was grandpapa. He must have been a very handsome ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of the window oftener than over a book; he loved to amuse himself with the varied spectacle of the street. Sometimes it was the fresh-looking Flemish peasant-girl, driving her donkey through the market-place, sometimes the little girls of the neighborhood, playing at shuttlecock during the fine evenings. Peasant-maid and little child were traced in original lines in the memory of the scholar; he already admired the indolent naivete of the one, the prattling grace of the other. He had his ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... with a veil draped about the brim, headed the cavalcade; and Lord M. rode beside her. The lively troupe went fast and far, to the extreme exhilaration of Her Majesty. Back in the Palace again, there was still time for a little more fun before dinner—a game of battledore and shuttlecock perhaps, or a romp along the galleries with some children. Dinner came, and the ceremonial decidedly tightened. The gentleman of highest rank sat on the right hand of the Queen; on her left—it soon became ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... been a shuttlecock betwixt two big battledores — New York and Florida. I scarcely dare to recall how many times I have been to and fro these two States in the last six weeks. It has been just move on, all the time: car dust, cinders, the fumes of hot ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... any appreciation of virtue, even any knowledge of its existence.... So now, on the day of Mary Turner's trial, there was a subtle gaiety of gossipings to and fro through the store. The girl's plight was like a shuttlecock driven hither and yon by the battledores of many tongues. It was the first time in many years that one of the employees had been thus accused of theft. Shoplifters were so common as to be a stale topic. There was a refreshing novelty in this case, where one of ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... single from the double-flowered plants, M. Chate tells us is not so difficult as might be supposed. The single stocks, he explains, have deep green leaves (glabrous in certain species), rounded at the top, the heart being in the form of a shuttlecock, and the plant stout and thickset in its general aspect, while the plants yielding double flowers have very long leaves of a light green colour, hairy, and curled at the edges, the heart consisting of whitish leaves, curved so that they ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... these past six months had been the fullest of his life. Time had made him his shuttlecock. Fortune had played with him. It had caught him when he was up in the world and flung him to the ground, and after that had seized him afresh, and sent him flying to a higher altitude than he had ever known before. As a fact, three months had not elapsed after his parting ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... flung out for fools to sport with, sir! Materialism and spiritualism are a fine pair of battledores with which charlatans in long gowns keep a shuttlecock a-going. Suppose that God is everywhere, as Spinoza says, or that all things proceed from God, as says St. Paul... the nincompoops, the door shuts or opens, but isn't the movement the same? Does the fowl come from the egg, or the egg from the fowl?... Just hand me some duck... ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... opportunity for exercising those abilities, could contentedly fill his empty days with the manufacture of blacking, or pass an entire night, as Gronow relates him to have done, playing battledore and shuttlecock for a wager with Ball Hughes, was, in much, a typical product of his generation. His mannerisms were accepted by his contemporaries with a forbearance which bordered on admiration, and, however childish ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... played ball and bandy with the Susquehannock boys, and taught them jack-stones and how to make a shuttlecock. They put eagle's feathers in his hair, and the old men adopted him into their tribe. On the third day the absent Indians returned with a stork. It was a white stork with a red bill and plenty of stork's ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... trick dog. After that Babiche appeared at all the children's matinees and oh, what a delicious lot of animal and children songs the Poetry Girl discovered! And did you ever see her do "Battledore and Shuttlecock" to minuet time? ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... the Western Swale,—now carried by the refluent tide back to the vicinity of its old quarters,—it seemed as though the River god and Neptune were amusing themselves with a game of subaqueous battledore, and had chosen this unfortunate carcass as a marine shuttlecock. For some time the alternation was kept up with great spirit, till Boreas, interfering in the shape of a stiffish "Nor'- wester," drifted the bone (and flesh) of contention ashore on the Shurland domain, where it lay in all the majesty of mud. It was soon discovered by the retainers, and dragged ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... He put forth his arm and found that it was so—there was no chair there and no figure seated in the chair. It was a trick of the light and an effect of imagination, an imagination that was hounded, day by day, from depth to pinnacle, from pinnacle to depth, back and forth like a shuttlecock in giant hands. No chair was there and no seated figure. He sank back on the settle and found that he ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... where light and shadow made a checkered round, Mistress Damaris Sedley sat upon the earth in a gown of rose-colored silk. Across her knee, under her clasped hands, lay a light racket, for she had strayed this way from battledore and shuttlecock and the sprightly company of maids of honor and gentlemen pensioners engaged thereat. She was a fair lady, of a clear pallor, with a red mouth very subtly charming, and dark eyes beneath level brows. Her eyes had depths on depths: to one player of battledore and shuttlecock ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... father, and showed himself a miserable puny creature. There was no harm in him—he had a great aversion to shedding blood: which was something—but, he was a weak, silly, helpless young man, and a mere shuttlecock to the great lordly battledores ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... boys were eating dates from a bowl and pelting each other with the stones, while a new member of the family, a seemingly sexless being in a blue sash and shoulder knots, called "Baby," galloped up and down the room with a battledore and shuttlecock. ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... wont seemed to portend the calamities that were to ensue; and after his breakfast stood at a window watching the dripping trees and whistling so softly one could not tell whether 'twere he or the birds chirping without. Cedric and Lady Constance played at battledore and shuttlecock. Mistress Penwick sat apart, busy with thought and needle. His Grace of Ellswold sat up that morning, his wife and physicians by his side, and all were ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... unfurnished room. It had been thrown out expressly as a playroom for the children by Cedric Bloxam's father, and as they grew up proved even more useful. Should the house be full and the weather prove wet, what games of battledore and shuttlecock, "bean-bags," &c., were played in it in the daytime, and what a ball-room it made at night! There was no trouble moving out the furniture or taking up the carpet, there being nothing but a few benches ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... or a whirlpool," she said, rather sententiously: "we have been stagnant for three days, and I begin to feel flat. Races are tabooed: besides, we cannot always leave mother alone. I propose we go out in the garden and have a game of battledore and shuttlecock;" for this had been a winter pastime with ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... to be imagined how sick it makes me for an hour or two, and, which is the misery, all that time one must be using some kind of exercise. Your fellow-servant has a blessed time on't that ever you saw. I make her play at shuttlecock with me, and she is the veriest bungler at it ever you saw. Then am I ready to beat her with the battledore, and grow so peevish as I grow sick, that I'll undertake she wishes there were no steel in England. But then to recompense the morning, I am in good humour ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... well most of the time, mine was seldom a dreamless sleep. Many of my dreams were, if anything, harder to bear than my delusions of the day, for what little reason I had was absolutely suspended in sleep. Almost every night my brain was at battledore and shuttlecock with weird thoughts. And if not all my dreams were terrifying, this fact seemed to be only because a perverted and perverse Reason, in order that its possessor might not lose the capacity for suffering, knew how to keep Hope alive with visions which supplied ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... first, as it was with great difficulty that he kept his body from playing battledore and shuttlecock. The greater the speed of the huge mass, however, the less inclination there was to bounce about, and he soon found himself literally glued, as it were, ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory
... then I determine to write to Sir James;—Wednesday, I may have an answer;—Thursday,—who knows but Thursday!—nothing is impossible; who knows but Thursday I may return to all my hopes?—How much I resemble a shuttlecock! how am I thrown from side to side by hope and fear; now up, now down; no sooner mounted by one hand than ...
— Barford Abbey • Susannah Minific Gunning
... for the wreck. Father and daughter both labored at the oars, unable to speak on account of the roar of the sea and wind, and blinded by the spray that whirled over them. Their boat was tossed like a shuttlecock in the great waves, and they knew that unless the shipwrecked persons could aid them it would be impossible to return to the lighthouse. They must succeed or die, and their chance ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... story that's in it May be told in a minute; But par parenthese chatting, On this thing and that thing, Keeps the shuttlecock flying, And ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... moment, all his tribulations in life may have been said to have commenced. The nobility laughed at his assumption of hereditary rank, while the middle classes frowned at his pretensions to be superior to them, so that he passed the existence of a shuttlecock, continually suspended in the air, and struck at and dismissed from ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... the apprentice, whether by land or sea, was highly anomalous and uncertain. Often taken by the gang in the hurry of visiting a ship, or in the scurry of a hot press on shore, he was in effect the shuttlecock of the service, to-day singing merrily at his capstan or bench, to-morrow bewailing his hard fate on board ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... now, my dear creatures," hereupon said Miss O'Donoghue, promptly addressing her nieces. "It is a fine morning, and you will lose your roses if you don't get the air. I don't care if it has begun to rain, miss! Go and have a game of battledore and shuttlecock then. Young people must have exercise. Well, my dear Rupert, well!"—when Molly, with a pettish "battledore and shuttlecock indeed!" had taken her sister by the arm and left ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... declare, here's Little Abe tipping about in the wind like a shuttlecock." Out I ran, and getting hold of his arm ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... going I knew not; of what we were going to do I had no inkling. I only knew we were southbound, and at long last I might fairly consider myself to be the shuttlecock of fortune. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... foggy all day, and the children had to content themselves with skating and battledore and shuttlecock in the verandahs. Lord Carrington, Tom, and Mabelle went for a long walk, calling on Cardinal Moran, and paying visits to the picture-gallery, the Anglican cathedral, and other places; and after an early ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... but kindly, and the blue sky looks most pleasingly there and here, broken by white clouds that relieve the eye without obscuring the light. At the farthest end of the lawn from the house were some fine trees, under the shelter of which two girls were playing at battledore and shuttlecock, and very well they played too. A little nearer this way, that is where John and the carriage stood, in the direction of the house, was a young child seated on the turf holding a dog, whilst two other children were trying to make it jump ...
— Brotherly Love - Shewing That As Merely Human It May Not Always Be Depended Upon • Mrs. Sherwood
... not answer your letter which I received at Heaton, because the latter part of my stay there was much engrossed by walking, riding, playing battledore and shuttlecock, singing, and being exceedingly busy all day long about nothing. I have just left it for this place, where we stop to-night on our way to Stafford; Heaton was looking lovely in all the beauty of its autumnal foliage, lighted by bright ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... lost and the rules of the game have never yet been thoroughly grasped. A quartette of men will occasionally rig up their net, which they raise to about the height of a foot and a half, and play a species of battledore and shuttlecock over it until the balls disappear; but it is scarcely tennis. As a matter of fact, a Russian generally rushes at the ball and misses it; on the rare occasions when he strikes the object, he does so with so much energy that the ball ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... strongest lose their point and sharpness; their rich and polished remains are converted into playthings for the drawing room, and, thus cast to and fro by the whitest hands, fall on the floor like a shuttlecock. We must, on this point, listen to the heroes of the epoch; their free and easy tone is inimitable, and it depicts both them and their actions. "I conducted myself," says the Duc de Lauzun, "very prudently, and even deferentially with Mme. de Lauzun; I knew Mme. de Cambis very openly, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... changed, it is quite on the cards that I shall be able to find language explicit enough to express the desire. My whole desire is to avoid complication of addresses. It is quite fatal. If two P. R.'s have contradictory orders they will continue to play battledoor and shuttlecock with an unhappy epistle, which will never get farther ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... place enough in her educational trainings, but let her also make sure that her girls have whatever chance she can afford to live out of doors, and to use the sports which develop the muscles and give tone and vigor. Even in our winters and in-doors, she can try to encourage active games such as shuttlecock and graces. I know of homes where the girls put on the gloves, and stand up with their brothers, and take gallantly the harmless blows which are so valuable a ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... he cried. Then, restraining himself at once, he hurried on again: 'After Mile End you remember I began to see much of the squire. Oh, my wife, don't look at me so! It was not his doing in any true sense. I am not such a weak shuttlecock as that! But being where I was before our intimacy began, his influence hastened everything. I don't wish to minimise it. I was not made ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... before I heard Trevanion's name. Newspapers, therefore, had their charms for me. Trevanion's prophecy about himself seemed about to be fulfilled. There were rumors of changes in the Cabinet. Trevanion's name was bandied to and fro, struck from praise to blame, high and low, as a shuttlecock. Still the changes were not made, and the Cabinet held firm. Not a word in the "Morning Post," under the head of "fashionable intelligence," as to rumors that would have agitated me more than the rise and fall of governments; ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... at once tumbled after him, and I followed too, as quickly as I could get along and the motion of the ship would allow me, being buffeted backwards and forwards like a shuttlecock between the bulwarks and deck-house in my progress onwards, as well as drenched by the spray, which came hurtling inboards over the main-chains from windward as it was borne along by the breeze, wetting everything amidships and soaking the main-sail as if buckets of water were continually ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Alter my love. Three times didst thou repulse The prince, and thrice he came to thee again, To beg thy love, and force on thee his own. At length chance wrought what Carlos never could. Once we were playing, when thy shuttlecock Glanced off and struck my aunt, Bohemia's queen, Full in the face! She thought 'twas with intent, And all in tears complained unto the king. The palace youth were summoned on the spot, And charged to name the culprit. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... have. And don't try to look like an outraged empress until your stays are covered up. Put on your dress and we'll have a game of battledore and shuttlecock in the hall. It's raining. Then we'll have some music this afternoon. My alto used to go beautifully with your soprano, and I'll get out our duets. I haven't forgotten one of the accompaniments—What are ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... frequent conferences now in the new Forty-second Street offices that commanded a view of two rivers and a vast battledoor and shuttlecock of the city, it was the first time in all those years that stretched from the night at the Waldorf that they had sat thus tete-a-tete. The day of the move she had ridden up from the old Union Square offices with him, a stack of files in her lap. Once, too, on a Saturday, the day of Zoe's invariable ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... now but organized masses of men, habituated to obey their leaders, among whom to change their vote is stigmatized as the treason of an Arnold, and between which the popular will is driven helplessly from side to side, like a shuttlecock between two battledores? Politics cleans our streets, regulates our education, and so on; it is not to be wondered at that it intrudes into the military sphere, with confidence all the greater because it is there especially ignorant. Let ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... reciprocation, transposition, rearrangement; shuffling; alternation, reciprocity; castling [at chess]; hocus-pocus. interchangeableness[obs3], interchangeability. recombination; combination 48[ref], 84.. barter &c. 794; tit for tat &c. (retaliation) 718; cross fire, battledore and shuttlecock; quid pro quo. V. interchange, exchange, counterchange[obs3]; bandy, transpose, shuffle, change bands, swap, permute, reciprocate, commute; give and take, return the compliment; play at puss in the corner, play at battledore and ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... millions of young men before and after him; and he heaved a great many profound sighs, and drank a great many glasses of sack, and came to the sorrowful conclusion that Dame Fortune was a malicious jade, inclined to poke fun at his best affections, and make a shuttlecock of his heart for the rest of his life. He thought, too, of Count L'Estrange; and the longer he thought, the more he became convinced that he knew him well, and had met him often. But where? He racked his brain until, between love, Leoline, and the count, he got that delicate organ into ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... said 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 to some light study: conchology, now: it always think that ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... majesty, I wish there were no geography and history in the world, and then I should not have to study so cruelly hard, and I could play more. My mother sent me last week a new battledore and shuttlecock, but I can never learn to play with it. I no sooner begin, than Herr Behnisch calls me to study. To-day I was very cunning—oh, I was so sly! I put it in the great-pocket of my tutor's coat, and he brought it here without ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... strangers should feel thoroughly welcome and at home, she joined them as soon as possible after their return from the sheepfold, and exerted herself to keep the shuttlecock of conversation in constant motion; but her brother's watchful eyes discerned the perturbed feeling she sought to hide; and, when she insisted, for the first time in two years, upon taking her seat and presiding at the tea-table, he ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... thought how at this very time The old church clock at home would chime. Dear heart, how plain he saw it all! The lich-gate and the crumbling wall, The stream, the pathway to the wood, The bridge where they so oft had stood. Then, in a trice, both church and clock Vanish'd before ... a shuttlecock. ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... Fortune, the queen, delights to play with me, Stopping my passage with the sight of Visus: But as he makes hither, I'll make hence, There's more ways to the wood than one[190]. What, more devils to affright me? O Diabolo! Gustus comes here to vex me. So that I, poor wretch, am like A shuttlecock betwixt two battledoors. If I run there, Visus beats me to Scylla; If here, then Gustus blows me to Charybdis. Neptune hath sworn my hope shall suffer shipwreck. What shall I say? mine Urinal's too thin To bide the fury of such ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... come over the young bonze. His conscience began to trouble him for breaking his vows. In the terrible conflict between principle and passion, the soul of the priest was tossed to and fro like the feathered seed-ball of a shuttlecock. ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... But it lasted barely three years. In B.C. 605 the Egyptians were defeated by Nebuchadrezzar under the walls of Carchemish on the Euphrates, and Asia passed into the possession of the Babylonians. Once more Palestine became a shuttlecock between the kingdoms of the Nile and the Euphrates. Trusting to the support of Egypt, Zedekiah of Judah revolted from his Babylonian master. His policy at first seemed successful. The Babylonian army which was besieging Jerusalem retired on the approach of Psammetikhos II., who had succeeded ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... discourse on all manner of sage subjects, but that is discussion, debate, argument, what you will, not conversation. Conversation is light, brilliant, and tossed back and forth from one to another with the grace and ease of the feathered shuttlecock. ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... good-bye to all peace and quiet. Bless you'—Sam's manner became fatherly—'I've seen it a hundred times. Couple get divorced, and, if there's a child, what happens? They start in playing battledore-and-shuttlecock with him. Wife sneaks him from husband. Husband sneaks him back from wife. After a while along comes a gentleman in my line of business, a professional at the game, and he puts one across on both the amateurs. He takes advantage of the confusion, slips in, and gets away with the kid. That's ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... immediately after we had passed them, we entered an elegant treillage of honeysuckles, roses, and eglantine, which formed the grand entrance to the garden. Here a most animated scene of festivity opened upon us. On one side were rope dancers, people riding at the ring, groups of persons playing at shuttlecock, which seemed to be the favourite, and I may add, the most ridiculous diversion; on the other side, were dancers, tumblers, mountebanks, and parties, all with gay countenances, seated in little bowers enjoying lemonade, and ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... Europeans. Siva sports with the world and his worshippers treat him with an affectionate intimacy which may be paralleled in the religion of Krishna but hardly in Christianity.[537] Thus several hymns have reference to a game, such as tossing about a ball (hymn vii), battledore and shuttlecock (xiv) or some form of wrestling in which the opponents place their hands on each other's shoulders (xv). The worshipper can even scold the deity. "If thou forsake me, I will make people smile at thee. I shall abuse ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... were waging a desperate and bloody war, the United States was like a shuttlecock, being struck repeatedly by the diplomatic battledores of each nation. Between the British "Orders in Council" and the French "Milan Decree," American commerce was in a fair way of being obliterated. To declare war against both nations, would ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... deserves its epithet, but falls after a time into rather uninteresting moods, whence it breaks only at the last period. The opening chorus, "God Is Our Refuge and Strength," seems to me to be built on a rather trite and empty subject, which it plays battledore and shuttlecock with in the brave old pompous and canonic style, which stands for little beyond science and labor. It is only fair to say, however, that A.J. Goodrich, in his "Musical Analysis," praises "the strength and dignity" of this ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... was not such an absolute Samson, but that he was much more likely to be hurt himself: and indeed, he had flown out into the road, like a shuttlecock. He had such an opinion of his own strength, however, that he was in real concern for the other ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... whale, but niver a fin could a see. 'Twere no wonder, for she were right below t' boat in which a were; and when she wanted to rise, what does t' great ugly brute do but come wi' her head, as is like cast iron, up bang again t' bottom o' t' boat. I were thrown up in t' air like a shuttlecock, me an' my line an' my harpoon—up we goes, an' many a good piece o' timber wi' us, an' many a good fellow too; but a had t' look after mysel', an a were up high i' t' air, afore I could say Jack Robinson, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... forehead in the fashion in which she wore it in her childish days. Thus attired, she looked about fourteen years old, and the shy way in which she glanced at the company from under her eyelashes, added to the impression of extreme youth. To carry out the character, she held a battledore and shuttlecock in her hand. ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Camilla to his bosom. Within the last six weeks he had learned to regard her with almost a holy horror. He could not understand by what miracle of self-neglect he had fallen into so perilous an abyss. He had long known Camilla's temper. But in those days in which he had been beaten like a shuttlecock between the Stanburys and the Frenches, he had lost his head and had done,—he knew not what. "Those whom the God chooses to destroy, he first maddens," said Mr. Gibson to himself of himself, throwing himself back upon early erudition and pagan philosophy. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... the midst of the empty, echoing courtyard, Nana, Pauline and other big girls engaged in games of battledore and shuttlecock. They had grown up together and were now becoming queens of their building. Whenever a man crossed the court, flutelike laugher would arise, and then starched skirts would rustle like the passing ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... (November 20) the news that Philippe Egalite had by his father's death just come into four millions of livres a year, that six hundred thousand livres paid by the Crown to his father thereupon devolved to Monsieur (afterward Louis XVIII.), and that the latter had kept up the game of shuttlecock with the treasure of the French by "a donation of all his estates to the duke of Normandy, the younger son of their Majesties, preserving for himself the use and profits thereof during his life"? That was a short winter-passage, too—more speedy than the land-trip of a letter in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... ourselves within doors, for there is no stirring abroad, with playing at cards, playing at shuttlecock, playing the fool, making love, and making moral reflexions: upon the whole, the week has not been ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... I know? Because, if you knew anything at all about love, you couldn't pay with it as you do. Even the love you've no use for is the biggest thing the poor devil who loves you has to offer you; you've no right to play battledore and shuttlecock with it." ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... Lord Ronald took after his father. From the start the lad had shown the greatest promise. At Eton he had made a splendid showing at battledore and shuttlecock, and at Cambridge had been first in his class at needlework. Already his name was whispered in connection with the All-England ping-pong championship, a triumph which would undoubtedly carry with it a seat ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... she might have said it to a merchant's son. Aunt Pen watched and approved this stratagem, hoped for the best results, and believed the day won when Debby grew pale and silent, and followed with her eyes the young couple who were playing battledoor and shuttlecock with each other's hearts, as if she took some interest in the game. But Aunt Pen clashed her cymbals too soon; for Debby's trouble had a better source than jealousy, and in the silence of the sleepless nights that stole her bloom she was taking counsel ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... should have slept through the whole of it if it had not been for a major, plainly a "dug-out" who had not gone soldiering for many years. He had landed from England a day before we did, and had, by his own account, been tossed about northern France like a shuttlecock, the different R.T.O.'s he dealt with being the battledores. He had been put into trains going the wrong way, dragged out of them and put into others which did not stop at his particular station. He was hungry, which he disliked; dirty, which he disliked still more; and was beginning to lose ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... being so near Perth and the Highlands, was perilous, and the coronation of James II. was therefore held at Holyrood (March 25, 1437). The child, who was but seven years of age, was bandied to and fro like a shuttlecock between rival adventurers. The Earl of Douglas (Archibald, fifth Earl, died 1439) took no leading part in the strife of factions: one of them led by Sir William Crichton, who held the important post of Commander of Edinburgh Castle; the other by Sir ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... Captain Barker, who hath paid me L300 this morning at my office, in comes my father, and with him I walked, and leave him at W. Joyce's, and went myself to Mr. Crew's, but came too late to dine, and therefore after a game at shittle-cocks—[The game of battledore and shuttlecock was formerly much played even in tennis courts, and was a very violent game.]—with Mr. Walgrave and Mr. Edward, I returned to my father, and taking him from W. Joyce's, who was not abroad himself, we inquired of a porter, and by his direction went to an ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... tall felt thing like a thimble, with a feather it its jeweled band that stuck up like a pen from an inkhorn, and from under that thimble his bush of stiff hair stuck down to his shoulders, curving outward at the bottom, so that the cap and the hair together made the head like a shuttlecock. All the materials of his dress were rich, and all the colors brilliant. In his lap he cuddled a miniature greyhound that snarled, lifting its lip and showing its white teeth whenever any slight movement disturbed it. The King's dandies were dressed ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... practical joking, and one day she even made two grave philosophers, who were holding a profound discussion in her presence over some deep philosophic subject, suddenly cease their arguments to play with her at battledore and shuttlecock. ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... former times I've seen, Which, I confess it, raised my spleen; They were contrived by Love to mock The battledoor and shuttlecock. Given, returned,—how strange a play, Where neither loses all the day, And both are, even when night sets in, Again as ready to begin! I am not sure I have not played This very game with some fair maid. Perhaps it was a dream; but this I know was not; I know a kiss Was given ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... cleverest, but, though my fader continued to pay my moder all possible respect, my poor moder could not suffer this attachment. And de consequence was, I did not know what to do between them; when I was civil to one, I was scolded by the other, and was very tired of being shuttlecock between them." ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... side. A scarlet over-sash kept the large sash-knot in its place. Her hair was gay with knot of scarlet crinkled crepe, lacquered comb, and hairpin of tiny golden battledore. Resting thereon were a shuttlecock of coral, another pin of a tiny red lobster and a green pine sprig made of silk. In her belt was coquettishly stuck the butterfly-broidered case that held her quire of paper pocket-handkerchiefs. The brother's dress was of a simpler ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... behind, and was beginning to feel slightly exhausted by his unwonted exertions, when he reached that bewildering part of the river termed "the Gut." So confusing were the intestine commotions of this gut, that, after passing a chequered existence as an aquatic shuttlecock, and being assailed with a slang-dictionary-full of opprobrious epithets, Mr. Verdant Green ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... ("There is another and a worse wicked nobleman" N. B., O. W.) But this is no fault, and, indeed, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find fault with Mr. TREE'S Lord Illingworth. Mrs. TREE as Mrs. Allonby, is a very charming battledore in the game of repartee-shuttlecock, who with eight other principal characters in the piece, has nothing whatever to do with the plot. To the character of Lady Hunstanton, as written in the Mrs. Nickleby vein, and as played by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, May 6, 1893 • Various
... the morning's work, and after luncheon there was walking in the park, rowing or sailing on the lake, riding or driving in the adjacent country, archery in a spacious field; and in bad weather billiards, reading in the library, music in the drawing-rooms, battledore and shuttlecock in the hall; in short, all the methods of passing time agreeably which are available to good company, when there are ample means and space for their exercise; to say nothing of making love, which Lord Curryfin did ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... you what I've done to-day—my holiday. In the first place it poured with rain all the morning, so I sent for a pair of battledores and a shuttlecock, and when Charles Mason came to render up last night's account, I made him come into a beautiful large ball-room I had discovered in this house, and took a good breathing; and he, being like Hamlet, "fat and scant ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... man's heart has been treated as a football. Yes; but many a woman's heart has been treated as a shuttlecock. ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... son. Now it is iniquitous, I maintain, that fathers should have these unlimited penal powers, that disgrace should be multiplied, apprehension made perpetual, the law now chastize, now relent, now resume its severity, and justice be the shuttlecock of our fathers' caprices. It is quite proper for the law to humour, encourage, give effect to, one punitive impulse on the part of him who has begotten us; but if, after shooting his bolt, insisting on his right, indulging his wrath, he discovers ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... and a night he was a sort of shuttlecock tossed between these alternating moods, and he was still the same when he paced the quadrangle with bowed head and hands clasped behind him awaiting Samoval at a few minutes before twelve of the following night. The windows that looked down from the ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... capo goes the conversation—the shuttlecock of wrath being briskly battled from one sister ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... this peculiar education and training kept me far ahead of other girls, and while they were scarcely out of the nursery, and still enjoying battledore and shuttlecock, I was seeking information, either by reading or conversation, concerning my forefathers, position, duties, ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... Benton plainly had begun with a gusto. It stirred one's blood. It called—it summoned with such a promise of variety, of adventure, of flotsam and jetsam and shuttlecock of chances, that I, a youth with twenty-one dollars and a half at disposal, all his clothes on his back, a man's weapon at his belt, and an appointment with a lady as his future, forgetful of past and courageous in present, strode confidently, ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... of assembling in thousands just to see a game played. We are not modernized enough to care to spend half a day watching others play. When we are tired of work we like to do our own playing. Our national game is the shuttlecock, which we toss from one to another over our shoulders, hitting the shuttlecock with the flat soles of the shoes we are wearing. Sometimes we hit with one part of the foot, sometimes with another, according to the rules of the game. This, ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... as every poet knows. Pegasus is a racer, not a cart-horse; Euterpe trips it like the hare, while dogged criticism is the tortoise, &c." The book had a fair success, both here and in America, and has been many times reprinted. Critiques of course were various, for and against; the shuttlecock of fame requires conflicting battledores: but, as I now again quote from that early notebook, "It is amusing to notice, and instructive also to any young author who may chance to see this, how thoroughly opposite many of the ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Winchester seems to have been made a regular shuttlecock of by the contending armies. Stonewall Jackson rescued it once, and last Sunday week his successor, General Ewell, drove out Milroy. The name of Milroy is always associated with that of Butler, and his rule in Winchester ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... to a man when wincing under an attack of this kind. "Never mind, sir," said he to Goldsmith, when he saw that he felt the sting. "A man whose business it is to be talked of is much helped by being attacked. Fame, sir, is a shuttlecock; if it be struck only at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground; to keep it up, it must ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... British consulate. The old wooden bungalow, with broad verandas, stood in a small garden a dozen yards from the lagoon, where the Broom Road narrowed as it left the business portion of Papeete and began its round of the island. There was just room enough on the salt grass for the shuttlecock to fall out of bounds, and for the battledores to swing free of the branches of the trees. The consul, though he wore a monocle, was without the pretense of officialdom except to other officials ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... call a tree generous, that sheds its fruit at every breeze.' Sir John having affected to complain of the attacks made upon his Memoirs[1106], Dr. Johnson said, 'Nay, Sir, do not complain. It is advantageous to an authour, that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck only at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends[1107].' Often have I reflected on this since; and, instead of being angry at many of those who have written against me, have smiled to think ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... automatisms, both motor and sensory. These were usually texts of Scripture which, sometimes damnatory and sometimes favorable, would come in a half- hallucinatory form as if they were voices, and fasten on his mind and buffet it between them like a shuttlecock. Added to this were a fearful ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... howl, but the rock walls seemed to catch it as a battledore catches a shuttlecock, and send it bounding back to me. I knew then that a cry from those depths would not carry far; and the fear at my heart gave a sharp, ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... the most wonderful place? No one knows it at all until after it has played battledore and shuttlecock with them, and they have been tossed to and fro for a long time. Weren't those old Persians wonderful people? Of course they had no means of knowing the real truth but it surely was the next thing to it to worship the dear sun. It goes away ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... his health, said to be much broken by protracted anxiety and responsibility in the service of the Czar. But everybody knew that Ignatieff was just then out of favor at St. Petersburg, and that his absence from the centres of active statecraft at a time when the peace of Europe fluttered like a shuttlecock in the air, between Salisbury and Shouvaloff, was nothing more or less than ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... multiplying these examples, the Negro must keep a strong and courageous heart. He cannot improve his condition by any short-cut course or by artificial methods. Above all, he must not be deluded into believing that his condition can be permanently bettered by a mere battledoor [sic] and shuttlecock of words, or by any process of mere mental gymnastics or oratory. What is desired along with a logical defense of his cause are deeds, results,—continued results, in the direction of building himself up, ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... to make the turns in safety for all that, nor does he have a chance for a long breath before he shoots at ever increasing speed into the "battledore" where the course turns almost at a right angle and shoots him on into the "shuttlecock" where he must negotiate another right angle. Then he must immediately take "stream corner" and be ready for his plunge into "the straight." From this again he has to take "Bulpett's corner." By this time he may be going seventy miles an hour, but "cresta ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... inevitable fingers of Fate, sat motionless, looking ahead beyond the oasis, beyond the stars, to the moment when the first wind blew a particle of sand to find its mate, with which to multiply and form the desert, the birthplace and burial ground of so many; whilst gnarled hands playing with Life's shuttlecock drew a golden thread to a brown, proceeding to weave them in and out with the blood-red silk of the pomegranate, the orange of the setting sun, the silver of the rising moon, and the purples of the bougainvillaea, ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... at so great an expense as that of conscience, and of a dishonour done to truth!" And the crime is so entirely objectless. A man who tells a lie, properly so called, has some hope of reward by it. But to lie for sport is to play at shuttlecock with your soul, and load your conscience for the mere sake of being a fool. "With what temper should I speak of those people? What words can express the meanness and baseness of the mind that can do this?" ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... on to the next, thinking that he is most entertaining. But in that society where one sometimes sits down and breathes, where conversation is considered as a fine art, and where talk is a mutual game of battledoor and shuttlecock, then it is that your stupid man looms up on the horizon like a blanket ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... a falling shuttlecock, shrieking as she fell; and as she struck the water, the drowned bodies of the men she had sent there came to the surface, and caught her by the feet and hair, and drew her down, making an end of her, as she also had ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... were those when that true knight was employed in field sports or yeomanry duties, such as the state of the country called for. When he was at home, all was fun and merriment and noise—walks and rides on fine days, battledore and shuttlecock on wet ones, music, singing, paper games, giggling and making giggle, and sometimes dancing in the hall—Mr. Frank Fordyce joining with all his heart and drollery in many of these, like the boy ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... employment of reading each morning was concluded, we danced, we sung, we played at blind-man's-buff, battledore and shuttlecock, and many other games equally diverting and innocent; and when tired of them, drew our seats round the fire, while each one in turn told some merry story ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... conduct of the lower ranks. In the suburbs of Paris, and in the neighbouring villages, where many of the allied troops were quartered, they appeared always on the best terms with the female inhabitants, and were often to be seen assisting them in their work, playing at the battledore and shuttlecock with them in the streets, or strolling in their company along the banks of the Seine, and through the woods of Belleville or St Cloud, evidently to the satisfaction of both parties. Much must be allowed for the national levity of the French; yet it may be doubted, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... one affirming he had compared it with the figure and description of Bewick, to which the other replied that Bewick was next to Nature. Here the old gentleman seized me by the thigh with his very hand-vice of a grasp; and I contrived to keep up the shuttlecock of conversation playfully to his highest satisfaction, though they who praised him so ardently, little imagined whose ears imbibed all their ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... like the children's game of shuttlecock. So long as the flying shuttle keeps moving in its restless course to and fro, life is. A single stop is death. The very same blow which, rightly placed, sends it like an arrow to the safe centre of the opposing racket, if it fall obliquely, or even with too great or too little force, drives ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... iceberg, which has chosen just now to turn head over heels. In turning, it struck the Halbrane and carried it off just as a battledore catches a shuttlecock, and now here we are, stranded at certainly one hundred feet above the level of ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... concentrate their attention on the one thought which should apparently swamp all others. They either yield to the strain, and lapse into unconsciousness, or their minds become the arena of minor emotions, wherein trivialities play battledore and shuttlecock with the tremendous issues of the moment. When a more extended knowledge of all that had happened, joined to a nicer adjustment of the time-factor in events, enabled Elsie to realise the extraordinary deliverance from death which she had been vouchsafed that night, she began to appreciate the service ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... question that I have asked. She did love me; and then she was ordered by her mother to abandon that love, and to give her heart to another. That in words she has been obedient, I know well; but what I doubt is this,—that she has in truth been able so to chuck her heart about like a shuttlecock. I can only say that I am not able ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... holidays were pleasant things, too. Saturday afternoons were always welcome, and all the weeks through we were planning what we would do when they came. Of course these plans were sometimes upset by a rainy day; but, even then, what with battledore and shuttlecock, painting and spinning tops, we contrived to make out the ...
— My Young Days • Anonymous
... shrubbery of laurels; while I waited for her I was pacing the broad lawn, of meagre close-cropped grass already faded by the sun, dominated, at its far end, by a statue rising from a fountain, in front of which a little girl with reddish hair was playing with a shuttlecock; when, from the path, another little girl, who was putting on her cloak and covering up her battledore, called out sharply: "Good-bye, Gilberte, I'm going home now; don't forget, we're coming to you this evening, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... they are half roasted alive, and have to take ices to cool them, and then for fear the cold will heat them, they have to take brandy cock-tail to counteract it. So they keep up a sort of artificial fever and ague all day. The ice gives the one, and brandy the other, like shuttlecock and battledore. If they had walked down as they had ought to have done, in the cool of the morning, they ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... said Mr. Weller. "Battledore and shuttlecock's a wery good game, when you ain't the shuttlecock and two lawyers the battledores, in which case it gets too excitin' to be pleasant. Come avay, sir. If you want to ease your mind by blowing up somebody come out into the court and blow up me; but it's rayther too expensive work ...
— The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick - A Lecture • Frank Lockwood
... was lost, with so many others. The war came to an end and a few weeks afterwards the Irish Parliamentary Party, which had so long played shuttlecock with the national destinies of Ireland, went to crashing doom and disaster at the polls. The country had found them out for what they were, and it cast them into that outer darkness from which, for them, there ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... forbidden to have connexion with women, but might give themselves up without restraint to every species of unmentionable debauchery; that when by any mischance a Templar infringed this order, and a child was born, the whole order met, and tossed it about like a shuttlecock from one to the other until it expired; that they then roasted it by a slow fire, and with the fat which trickled from it anointed the hair and beard of a large image of the devil. It was also said that ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... fellow. He drove the full length of the street twice, passing the Inn of the Stars both times at a lively clip, and might have gone on forever in his shuttlecock enterprise, had not the excited voice of a woman hailed him ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... from Delhi was a village school, where were many small boys,—so many Asiatic frogs-in-a-well,—to whom "the news of the day" was full of terrible portent. Once, when they were tired of foot-ball, and the shuttlecock had grown heavy on their hands, the cry was, "What shall we play next?" And one daring little fellow—whose father had been to Delhi with his rent, and had told how the Nawab met his kismut (his fate) ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... Fanny to herself, as she quietly surveyed him looming up through the shade of a pair of magnificent whiskers, and heard him passing the shuttlecock of compliment back and forth with the most assured and practised air in the world,—"to be sure, I was a child in imagining that I should see Cousin George Somers. I'm sure this magnificent young gentleman, full of all utterance and knowledge, is not the cousin that I used to feel so ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... flowers; and once she picked, and put into the bosom of her dress, a little belated monthly rose, warm and pink at the heart, but with blighted outer petals. She found it impossible to pursue any one line of thought to its logical outcome; her mind flew like a shuttlecock between a dozen plans for William King's defeat. "Oh, I must decide on something!" she thought, desperately. But the futile morning passed without decision. After dinner she went resolutely into the parlor, and sitting down on her little low chair, ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... the former favour of the public. If he be daunted by a bad reception on this second occasion, he may again become a stranger to the arena. If, on the contrary, he can keep his ground, and stand the shuttlecock's fate, of being struck up and down, he will probably, at length, hold with some certainty the level in public opinion which he may be found to deserve; and he may perhaps boast of arresting the general attention, in the same manner as the Bachelor Samson ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... elbows on the grass that I might face her. "Listen, madame. It is time you knew the story of Pemaou." And thereupon I recited all that had happened between the Huron and myself from the day when we had played at shuttlecock with spears till the night when he had shadowed us at the Pottawatamie camp,—the night before our wedding. I even told her of ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... drawings which represent a lost painting, there is a noble one of Bishop Fisher, whose execution preceded More's by only a few weeks. A literally venerable head it was (Plate 21), to be the shuttlecock of papal defiance and royal determination not to be defied with impunity. For assuredly if the life of the Bishop of Rochester hung in the balance, as it did, in May, 1535, it was Paul III.'s mad effrontery in making him a Cardinal while he was actually in the Tower under ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... drawn back, and the chest should be enlarged by taking deep inspirations of pure air. The muscles of the chest, and of every part of the body, should be free to move and unconfined by tight clothing. Fencing, shuttlecock, and such other useful sports as combine with them free movements of the upper part of the body, are doubly advantageous, for they not only exercise the muscles of the whole body, but possess the additional advantage of animating the mind and increasing ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... he had found it a dangerous attempt to scale it. But not Alice only, her father also showed himself near the window, and beckoned him up. The family party seemed now more promising than before, and the fugitive Prince was weary of playing battledore and shuttlecock with his conscience, and much disposed to let matters go ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... hideous mockery of it rang in his ears: where is the God that this man proclaimed? he saw the newspaper headlines, listened in imagination to cynical comments, beheld his name trailed through the soiled places of the cities, the shuttlecock of men and women. "To him that overcometh, to him will I give of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, and upon the stone a new name written, which no one knoweth but he that receiveth it." Might he ever win that new name, eat of the hidden manna of a hidden power, become ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... were many strangers with us; and in the afternoon I played at shuttlecock with young cousin Emil, to whom we were so kind, and who deserved our kindness so well. How it happened I cannot tell, but before long Ernst took his place, and was my partner in the game. He looked ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer |
