"Skittles" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that's just it. That's just what I thought." He colored more deeply, with a hectic spot in each cheek. "Life isn't all beer and skittles to me, don't you know—and you'd be the kind of thing I haven't got, don't you know?" He leaned toward her beseechingly. "Do you ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... a pill,' said Spurstow, who had been watching Hummil's white face narrowly. 'Take a pill, and don't be an ass. That sort of talk is skittles. Anyhow, suicide is shirking your work. If I were Job ten times over, I should be so interested in what was going to happen next that ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... thought of it, the more he was satisfied of its feasibility, and he trotted over, the next day, to the Old Duke of Cumberland, to see his friend on the subject. Viney, like most victuallers, was more given to games of skill—billiards, shuttlecock, skittles, dominoes, and so on—than to the rude out-of-door chances of flood and field, and at first he doubted his ability to grapple with the details; but on Mr. Watchorn's assurance that he would keep him straight, he gave Mrs. Viney a key, desiring her to go into the inner cellar, and bring out ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... polka!—the rattling "Post knock Polka!"—Off! away they go, after a great deal of reluctance and playful diffidence as to who should lead off—Miss Charmer with Arthur Beau, twirling round and round, in and out (like an eel among skittles); followed by Mr. Latimer and Miss Jemima, who evidently intended to do great things, but only cause confusions and contusions, until they get knocked into the open space, in the centre of the human vortex—the Charmer spinning, as a top that could ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... Major used to drop in after that, and show me his new suits and the latest thing in sticks—nobby things, with a silver band round them and his name. Then he got a terrier, and learned to be knowing as to bars. I envied, but luckily had no money. Besides, that's all skittles any way, and you've to pay for it sweetly through the nose in the long-run. Now ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... by a terrible squint. Mr Rubb's mode of speaking was pleasant to her; whereas she was by no means sure that she liked Mr Maguire's speech. But Mr Maguire was by profession a gentleman. As the discreet young man, who is desirous of rising in the world, will eschew skittles, and in preference go out to tea at his aunt's house—much more delectable as skittles are to his own heart—so did Miss Mackenzie resolve that it would become her to select Messrs Stumfold and Maguire as her male friends, and to treat Mr Rubb simply as ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... grass and forest, down and vale. No, my gallant friends. You know that I could ride, if I chose; and I am vain enough to be glad that you know it. But useless are your coaxings, solicitations, wavings of honest right hands. 'Life,' as my friend Tom Brown says, 'is not all beer and skittles;' it is past two now, and I have four old women to read to at three, and an old man to bury at four; and I think, on the whole, that you will respect me the more for going home and doing my duty. That I ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... ordinary Socialists the reform means a fairer distribution of the joint product of capital and labour; higher wages for the workingman, shorter hours, better food and more of it, better clothes, better houses, more amusements—in short, "beer and skittles" in reasonable amount. The Socialism of Ruskin and Morris was an outcome of their aesthetic feeling. They liked to imagine the work people of the future as an intelligent and artistic body of handicraftsmen, living in pretty Gothic cottages among gardens of their own, scattered ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... rushed, and for the only time in my life I hit a woman. Without hesitancy or compunction, only revolted at the thought of such contact with such matter, I smashed her down. The Boss and Mick freed themselves together and embraced each other willingly. Twinetoes was playing skittles with the remaining dock rats. There was surprisingly little noise. No one shouted. There was no howling hounding on of each other. All but the girl were absorbed in the immediate business of giving or ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... her hands with ghostly kisses. "It seems an eternity that I've been struggling back to you through the outer void and what-not. Sometimes, I confess I all but despaired. Life is not, I assure you, all beer and skittles ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... strength, and was fully conscious that to be a good animal is the first requisite. He swam, rowed, walked, and could tire out any of his colleagues at swordplay or skittles. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... for chapel roll-call, and for the few minutes' lounge before evening prayers, except when it rained hard enough, and then the water poured through the contractor's felt roof. It was too narrow to be used, as was hoped, for games; unless, indeed, we had turned it into a skittle-alley. But then skittles is a game of low connections. Finally, well-wishers were solemn in their warnings that the drainage of the spot was defective (which, indeed, was no otherwise than true, till we brought about a reform), and that our settlement by the sea was nothing ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... individuals, without fee or reward from those who employ them. Nor are they cooped up, so as to be excluded from the benefit of fresh air, there being an open area, of a considerable extent, adjacent to the building, on which they may exercise themselves in walking, skittles, bowls, and a variety of other diversions, according to ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... be guilty of flirting; nor was there any man within ten miles of Hamworth who would have dared to make the attempt. Women for the most part are prone to love-making—as nature has intended that they should be; but there are women from whom all such follies seem to be as distant as skittles and beer are distant from the dignity of the Lord Chancellor. Such a woman was ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... rumour has it that the Colonel and I are the only two real Irishmen in the battalion. It should be remembered that a unit of a rifle regiment is known as rifleman, not private; we like the term rifleman, and feel justly indignant when a wrong appellation plays skittles with our rank. ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... before the Militia could be assembled, living as they did in distant regions of the island. But nowadays, as befitted a laborious rural population, they were spending their morning in the wine-shops of the town, gambling, drinking, or playing skittles. This enabled a sufficient number of them to forgather, in an incredibly short space of time, at the outskirts of the market-place (occupied by a seething, howling tangle of humanity)—there to receive the plainest ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... obtained from the crest of a slope about half a mile to the east, where the high explosives are dealt with. The foundry lies hidden in the depths between, the tops of its chimneys sprouting like huge skittles into the middle distance. Across the crest runs a platform of concrete, with a parapet which suggests a fortification, because there is a huge cannon of the obsolete Woolwich Infant pattern peering across it at the town. The cannon is mounted on an experimental gun carriage: possibly the original ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... One was carrying a little child in his arms, and a young man and maid sitting on the low wall round the well, seemed to be carrying on a courtship over the pitcher that stood waiting to be filled. Two lads were playing at skittles, children were running up and down the stairs and along the wooden galleries, and men and women went and came by the entrance gateway between the two effigies of knights in armour. Some were servants bringing helm or gauntlet for repair, or taking the like away. Some might be known ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... skittles. And because you'd make me keenly alive again to all sorts of things that I see now don't matter—things that have lost some of their power to trouble me, but that I should feel ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... smile. "How do the others get on without it?" she wondered, watching Prue and Grizzel as they loitered along just before her, Grizzel dragging weary little feet in the dust. "I suppose they are used to it. Life in Australia isn't all beer and skittles. I wonder what skittles are? If they are something nice to drink I wish we had some here. Even beer would be better than nothing. I am a beautiful Patrol Leader! Walking behind and grousing for all I am worth." She hurried her steps a little and ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... attorney-general we can't help ourselves; the general will get him replaced by some Parisian devoted to his interests," continued Rigou. "If he gets a place in Paris for Gendrin and makes Guerbet chief-justice of the court at Auxerre, he'll knock down our skittles! The gendarmerie is on his side now, and if he gets the courts as well, and keeps such advisers as the abbe and Michaud we sha'n't dance at the wedding; he'll play us some scurvy ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... who played with the king, entirely owed his political fortune to the skill which he displayed in this game. Billiards has not as yet been placed, like skittles and bowls, under the interdict of the police authorities, and it is difficult to see how they could venture upon so tremendous an experiment. The game seems to be more in vogue than ever, and doubtless ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... any down on you or want to put any obstacles in your way. Not a bit of it. God knows I'm no Puritan, neither have I any quarrel with a man's love of sport and animals; not much. But there's got to be something else in a real man's life, you know, Dick. Beer and skittles are all very well—an excellent institution, especially combined with the sort of admirable knowledge of horses and dogs, and the sort of seat in the saddle that you have, my friend. But over and above all that, you know, I want something else ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... Charity was pleased with her own appearance. Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse and the mistress were seeing company this afternoon, and the neighboring Kentish squires who had come to play skittles and to drink sack-posset might easily find a less welcome sight than that of the serving ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... be men. Of the real value and motive of poetry she had a most exalted idea. 'Poetry,' she says, in the preface of one of her volumes, 'has been as serious a thing to me as life itself; and life has been a very serious thing. There has been no playing at skittles for me in either. I never mistook pleasure for the final cause of poetry, nor leisure for the hour of the poet. I have done my work so far, not as mere hand and head work apart from the personal being, but as the completest ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... as rowing, skating, cricket, quoits, foot-ball, rackets, single-stick, bandy, bowls, skittles, and all gymnastic exercises. Such games bring the muscles into proper action, and thus cause them to be fully developed. They expand and strengthen the chest; they cause a due circulation of the blood, making it to bound merrily ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... cleared them all away! Nothing of the kind. There are plenty of malicious spirits about still, and now that an heir is coming to Rush they are keener than ever to try and work some mischief. No use saying anything to Tom (his brother). He will only laugh, and say it is all skittles. But tell my little sister-in-law to PRAY—PRAY—PRAY. That is all they need and ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... who had a soul above the vulgar herd, and who, on account of his greatness, could only afford to be merry now and then, threw himself on a bench with the air of a man who was faint with dignity. He looked with an indifferent eye, alike on skittles, cards, and dice, thinking only of the locksmith's daughter, and the base degenerate days on which ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... sister, then repaired to the Punch Bowl, where they mixed in the excitement of pigeon-racing. Morel never in his life played cards, considering them as having some occult, malevolent power—"the devil's pictures," he called them! But he was a master of skittles and of dominoes. He took a challenge from a Newark man, on skittles. All the men in the old, long bar took sides, betting either one way or the other. Morel took off his coat. Jerry held the hat containing the ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... was more than this to happen. Even more than this. Sir Joseph Bowley, Baronet and Member of Parliament, was to play a match at skittles—real skittles—with his tenants! ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... the actor's life is one of bevo and skittles sally along with a new play on its try-out in the one-night circuit. When one sees the delightful humour, fortitude, and high spirits with which the players face their task he gains a new respect for the profession. It is with a sense of shame that the wincing author hears his ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... comments of "The Fancies," the life of the Military Police was not all beer and skittles. The control of the traffic at some of the cross-roads, favoured by the Boche heavy gunners, was nerve-racking in ordinary times, and tenfold more so during an action, and several awards were given to the Divisional Military Police for ...
— A Short History of the 6th Division - Aug. 1914-March 1919 • Thomas Owen Marden
... "Old maid" the children pair the groups and so learn to recognise them; in dominoes they use this knowledge, while "Snap" involves quick recognition. Any one can make up a game in which scoring is necessary. Ninepins or skittles is a number game, and one can score by using number groups, or by fetching counters, shells, beads, etc., as reminders. The number groups are important; they form what Miss Punnett calls "a scheme" for those who have no great visualising ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... relieved, besieged, reduced, and finally remodelled by the grand Roads and Demolitions Scheme of his friend Napier, the latter came down to Allahabad, and he and Yule sought diversion in playing quoits and skittles, the only occasion on which either of them is known to have evinced ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... seem to be just now, to judge by most modern novels and poems. . . ." A week had never been for Chesterton just seven days hard, although he had worked hard enough. He had enjoyed the spice of life, he had liked Beer and Skittles and the distractions of life and its high points ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... weeks elapse, and then went to Maltby. The Cockchafer was a small, unpretentious tavern, frequented chiefly by carriers and tradesmen, and, I regret to say, not wholly unknown to some of the boys of Saint Dominic's, who were foolish enough to persuade themselves that skittles, and billiards, and beer were luxuries worth the risk incurred by breaking one of the rules of the school. No boy was permitted to enter any place of refreshment except a confectioner's in Maltby ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... No one thought of eating and drinking, and at 4 p.m. there were many spectators in the crowd who had not taken their customary lunch! A much more significant fact, even the national passion for gaming was allayed by the general emotion. Thimbles, skittles, and cards were left in their wrappings, and testified that the great event of ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... storm of wind arises, and the great waves swell, We will scud along the billows like a blown foam-bell, When 'tis glassy calm beneath a sky without one fleck, I'll play a game of skittles on the calm ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... again, one and sixpence. Shooting-gallery, one and sevenpence. Treating Tony, and then he wouldn't shoot, so I did, one and eightpence. Living Skeleton, a penny—no, Tony treated me, the Living Skeleton doesn't count. Skittles, a penny, one and ninepence Mermaid (but when we got inside she was dead), a penny, one and tenpence. Theatre, a penny (Priscilla Partington, or the Green Lane Murder. A beautiful young lady, sir, with pink cheeks and a real pistol), that's one and ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... kings, all that remained to accomplish was the bombardment of its walls, which became a sort of spectacle, to which we went day after day to watch the effect of the fire, as we should have done with a game of skittles. I climbed up on the top of a neighboring mountain, and, with my field-glass, inspected the town. Women went and came with their water-pitchers on their heads, moving in serene tranquillity, without quickening a step, and the life of the place seemed absolutely ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... were persisting in playing in the dark the never very lucrative game of three sticks a penny, conducted by a couple of gipsies. Poor fellows! there was one excuse for them. It was the only thing there to play at, except a set of skittles; and on those they had lost their money every Saturday night for the last seven years each ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... pitched not far from the guns on a place high and dry, from which we had a remarkably extended view. Near the tent, on a cleared space, around the battery itself, we had our games of skittles, or chushki. The obliging soldiers had made for us rustic benches and tables. On account of all these amusements, the artillery officers, our comrades, and a few infantry men liked to gather of an evening around our battery, and the place came ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... Mackenzie's men, one may guess from the fact that they chased whales all the next day in their canoes. The whales dived below, fortunately; for one blow of a finback or sulphur bottom would have played skittles with the canoes. Coming back from the whale hunt, triumphant as if they had caught a dozen finbacks, the men erected a post, engraving on it the date, July 14, 1789, and ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... verandah with a roof and sides of glass. In country places the inn gardens are used as dining-rooms from morning till night, and you may if you choose have everything you eat and drink brought to you out of doors. Most inns have a skittle alley, for skittles are still played in Germany by all classes. The peasants play it on Sunday afternoons, and the dignified merchant has his skittle club and spends an evening there once a week. The favourite card game of Germany is still Skat, but bridge has been heard of and will probably supersede ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... deal of gambling still goes on with skittles all over the country. At a place not ten miles from London, I am told that as much as two thousand pounds has been seen upon the table in a single 'alley,' or place of play. The bets were, accordingly, very high. The instances revealed by exposure at ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... quite simple. I should answer, 'I am ready enough to play if any of you are ready to pay my losses and take my winnings; I am tired of being as good as an annuity to you all,' for that is what you have been for the last ten years. Why, it would be cheaper for you to send home to England for skittles, and ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... of this Vol.] With respect to gaming, the act ordained that all publicans suffering journeymen, labourers, servants, or apprentices, to game with cards, dice, shuffleboards, mississippi, or billiard tables, skittles, nine-pins, &c. should forfeit forty shillings for the first offence, and for every subsequent offence, ten pounds shall be ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... game, And against your gaiters level; There's danger even where fish are caught, To those who a wetting fear; For what's worth having must aye be bought, And sport's like life and life's like sport, "It ain't all skittles and beer." ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... available only for foot passengers or hand-carts, sometimes entered only at one end and known as a "blind alley,'' or cul-de-sac. The name is also given to the long narrow enclosures where bowls or skittles ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... an expression of Alois's, "Saint Florian had left off playing at skittles, and Saint Leonhard had driven his hay over the heavenly bridge." The warring elements were still, but the earth seemed smouldering with heat, and we panted and gasped after the lofty mountain-slopes which lay on all sides. At the same time it came most ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... itself—because without coming back he could no longer be a man. He had come back because the Furies had driven him with their whip of knotted snakes, and he could do nothing but yield to their hounding. If Lois thought that traveling in the West was beer and skittles when hunted and scourged by yourself like that—well, she had better ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... keep carriages for their own private use; and near fifty have country houses. The relaxations of the humbler class, are fives, quoits, skittles, ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... least fifteen stone, the dress he wore did not become him quite so much as slimmer and taller men. Flanked by his tall Majors, Thrupp and Gutch, he looked like a stumpy skittle-ball between two attenuated skittles. The plump little Colonel received me with vast cordiality, and I speedily became a prime favorite with himself and the other officers of the corps. Jowler was the most hospitable of men; and gratifying my appetite and my love together, ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and fell in for their first march when they began to realize that a soldier's life was not all beer and skittles. They were much impressed with the size and bestial ferocity of the niggers whom they had now learned to call "Paythans," and more with the exceeding discomfort of their own surroundings. Twenty old soldiers in the corps would have taught them how to ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... a drab coat and a red weskit, to sit by his side, when he drove. I already began to ogle the gals in the carridges, and to feel that longing for fashionabl life which I've had ever since. When he was at the oppera, or the play, down I went to skittles, or to White Condick Gardens; and Mr. Frederic Altamont's young man was somebody, I warrant: to be sure there is very few man-servants at Pentonwille, the poppylation being mostly gals of all work; and so, though only fourteen, I was as much ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... line already"; and then he hurled various items of news at us: "the horse teams were managing to do a good trip; and Mac? Oh, Mac's getting along," he shouted; "struck him on a dry stage; seemed a bit light-headed; said dry stages weren't all beer and skittles—queer idea. Beer and skittles! He won't find much beer on dry stages, and I reckon the man's dilly that 'ud play a game of skittles on ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... go, the whole damn lot of you!" cried my lord. These not being familiar military words of command, the men stuck there like skittles. "Ground arms, or whatever it is!" he continued. "About ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... Romans, too, are a nation of gamblers. Their chief amusement, not to say their chief occupation, is gambling. In the middle of the day, at street-corners and in sunny spots, you see groups of working-men playing at pitch halfpenny, or gesticulating wildly over the mysterious game of "Moro." Skittles and stone-throwing are the only popular amusements which require any bodily exertion; and both of these, as played here, are as much chance as skill. The lottery, too, is the great ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... men showed such perfect discipline that Robin was invited to knock them down, as if they had simply been three skittles in a row; he recovered his presence of mind and did it; and looking back at Mary, received signal to be off. Perceiving that his brave love would take no harm—for the tanner was come forth blustering loudly, and Mrs. Popplewell with ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... are about the poorest 'and at a yarn!' cried the clerk. 'Crikey, it's like Ministering Children! I can tell you there would be more beer and skittles about my little jaunt. I would go and have a B. and S. for luck. Then I would get a big ulster with astrakhan fur, and take my cane and do the la-de-la down Piccadilly. Then I would go to a slap-up restaurant, and have green peas, and a bottle of fizz, and a chump chop—Oh! and I forgot, ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... 'Skittles!' said John. 'On what? The Pink Un and a measly religious paper? I had to leave Browndean; I had to, I tell you. I got tick at a public, and set up to be the Great Vance; so would you, if you were leading such a beastly existence! And a card stood me a lot of ale ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... experience of my life. Already the temporary discomforts produced by heat and soiled garments had faded into insignificance, and assumed a most trivial aspect when I reviewed the journey as a whole. They were part of the game. To again quote "Trilby," tramping "is not all beer and skittles." Your true tramp learns to take things as he finds them and never to expect or ask or the impossible. He will drink the wine of the country, even when sour, without a grimace; pass without grumbling a sleepless night; plod through dust ankle deep, ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... yourself, sir, should be very careful. I was perhaps a trifle inclined to atheistical opinions myself." For (perhaps with a deeper wisdom than we are inclined in these days to admit) he plainly bracketed agnosticism with beer and skittles. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rational creature. I return homewards to-morrow; my campaigns are never very long; I have great curiosity for seeing places, but I despatch it soon, and am always impatient to be back with my own Woden and Thor, my own Gothic Lares. While the lords and ladies are at skittles, I just found a moment to ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... in Rice. "Do you remember, Ralph, the night that Professor Torts had his little beer-and-skittles party in his lair, and Burns, who roomed across the passage and who was the worst bummer in Encina, went down to Fessler, and complained that he couldn't study because of the noise in that number? And Fessler forgot who roomed there and came up and gave them Tartarus ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... baths of Bormio that we came together. I had bribed a waiter to seat me next her father at dinner; but, when the time came, I could say nothing to him, so anxious was I to create a favorable impression. In the evening, however, I found the family gathered round a pole, with skittles at the foot of it. They were wondering how Italian skittles was played, and, though I had no idea, I volunteered to teach them. Fortunately none of them understood Italian, and consequently the expostulations of the boy in ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... was a public-house, but it was not inside one! And Mother would call it gambling. Oh, but it wasn't cards or skittles! And if he shot away his half-pence, how should he pay for the shoeing of the pony? The blacksmith might trust him, or the clerk at the post-office would lend him the money, or Betsey Hardman. And the time? One shot would not waste much! Pony must be shod. Besides, Dick ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... treasonable and seditious trash, by the zealous parish-officers or their assistants. A quantity of his ale was drunk up in healths to the King and Peveril of the Peak. And, finally, the boys, who bore the ex-parson no good-will for his tyrannical interference with their games at skittles, foot-ball, and so forth, and, moreover, remembered the unmerciful length of his sermons, dressed up an effigy with his Geneva gown and band, and his steeple-crowned hat, which they paraded through the village, and burned on the spot whilom occupied by a stately Maypole, which Solsgrace had formerly ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... during the holidays had plenty of sport, outdoor and indoor, which kept out the cold by wholesome exercise and recreative games. Many a hard battle was fought with snowballs, or with bat-and-ball on the ice; the barns were the scenes of many a wrestling match or exciting game at skittles; and in the evenings they played such romping games as blind-man's-buff, hunt the slipper, and others of a similar character. While the company sat round the yule-log blazing on the hearth, eating mince-pies, or plum porridge, and quaffing a bowl of ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... his own devices," said Mr. Gibney indulgently. "Mac's just as Irish as if he'd been born in Dublin instead of his old man. Nobody yet overcome the prejudice of an Irishman so we'll do the honours ourself, Scraggsy, old skittles, and leave Mac in charge of ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... which one vowed to be mere jack-acting; then a learned disquisition on raising the devil, which one of the party declared he had seen done, one Sunday afternoon, for the purpose of borrowing some cash to play skittles with. In fact, care and thought were thrown to the winds; and, tired as we were, sleep often overtook us, still laughing at the men's witticisms. And then such dreams,—they seemed as if an angel had sent them to reward ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... loud, joyful, and steeplechasing Lord, in the pursuit of pleasure and distant wars, dons the golden cords for a season, the world understands that this is masquerading, skittles, and a joke. One must not confound the ideal A.D.C. with such ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... who had been giving a small order at the little saddler's, and the groom from the great house, and the publican, and even the two skittle-players (and here note that, howsoever busy all the rest of village human-kind may be, there will always be two people with leisure to play at skittles, wherever village skittles are), what encouragement would be on us to plait and weave! No one looks at us while we plait and weave these words. Clock-mending again. Except for the slight inconvenience of carrying a clock under our arm, and the monotony of making the bell go, whenever we came to a ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... Korner,—had likewise quartered themselves in Gohlis; and so had Dr. Albrecht and his wife, Sophie, the actress. These with one or two others were enough for converse and for jollity; and there were merry evenings, with wine and talk, and cards and skittles and nonsense. Though ordinarily he 'joked wi' difficulty', Schiller could be jovial enough in a company of congenial spirits. Nevertheless there was but little of the bohemian about him. That dignified seriousness which ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... put your charge," said Bob very sagely. "I'm going to make it lift the rock, and drop it down over the side, and then away it'll go and sweep a lot of those big bits with it, just as if they were skittles, and they'll all go down like a big clatter stream ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... Winter's Tale" were a lesson in fortitude. They taught me once and for all that an actress's life (even when the actress is only eight) is not all beer and skittles, or cakes and ale, or fame and glory. I was cast for the part of Mamilius in the way I have described, and my heart swelled with pride when I was told what I had to do, when I realized that I had a real Shakespeare part—a possession that father ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... procreate a child, found in this moment of fury more vigour than was necessary to undo a man. He seized with his hairy right hand his heavy club, lifted it, brandished it and adjusted it so easily you could have thought it a bowl at a game of skittles, to bring it down upon the pale forehead of the said Rene, who knowing that he was greatly in fault towards his lord, remained placid, and stretching his neck, thought that he was about to expiate his sin for his sweetheart in this world and ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... houses of the suburbs he offered some cider; after some hundred yards the gendarme returned the compliment and they stopped at the "Sauvage." A league further, another stop was made at the "Vieille Cave." Gousset then proposed a game of skittles, which the gendarme and Morin accepted. It was nearly seven in the evening when they passed Potigny. The evening was magnificent and the sun still high on the horizon; as they knew they would not ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... make or break for the wheat growers of the State now, no mistake. Here are the land cases and the new grain tariff drawing to a head at about the same time. If we win our land cases, there's your new freight rates to be applied, and then all is beer and skittles. Won't the San Joaquin go wild if we pull it off, and ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... football and rowing. It doesn't tire you so much if you do it that way. Only let me give you one piece of advice, which I only wish I acted upon: 'Don't do your thinking by deputy:' do your rowing, golf, football, cricket, skittles, talking if you like, ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... down, on either bank, were covered houses built of stone, square and roughly cornered, set as if the brook were meant to be the street between them. Only one room high they were, and not placed opposite each other, but in and out as skittles are; only that the first of all, which proved to be the captain's, was a sort of double house, or rather two houses joined together by a plank-bridge, over ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... straw, what a sight, what a beautiful sight! And the wooden comb hanging among the farmer's smocks, with the green hair of the sward caught in its teeth! The pitchfork, stood in the corner, like a misbehaving child, dozing as he stands and dreaming of the hay-fields! And the bowl and skittles there,—the trim-waisted skittles, shapely maids, whose orderly quadrilles Patou in his gambols clumsily upsets! The great worm-eaten bowl whose curved expanse some ant is always crossing, travelling with no less pride than famed explorers,—around ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... very fresh and alert, with zest for every moment of life. He worked and rode and drove to market, he went out with companions and got tipsy occasionally and played skittles and went to the little travelling theatres. Once, when he was drunk at a public house, he went upstairs with a prostitute who seduced ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... fellows find out that they are no better off for the change, and that a Republic does not mean beer and skittles, or, as they would like, unlimited absinthe and public workshops, with short hours and high pay, they will begin to get savage, and then there will be trouble. The worst of it is one can never rely upon the troops, ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... immigration to America. And England fanned and favored this exodus, for it was very certain that there were too many mouths to feed in Ireland—half the number would not so jeopardize the beer and skittles of the landlords. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... engaging in such perilous diversions, servants and labourers were ordered to "have bows and arrows and to use the same on Sundays and holy days, and leave all playing at tennis or football and other games called quoits, dice, casting of the stone, kailes (skittles) and other importune games." Swords and daggers were prohibited "but in time of war for the defence of the realm of England"—a wise measure when the country was infested with vagrants and there were so many liveried retainers prompt to resent ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... thing, Sir,' rejoined Sam, 'they don't mind it; it's a reg'lar holiday to them—all porter and skittles. It's the t'other vuns as gets done over vith this sort o' thing; them down-hearted fellers as can't svig avay at the beer, nor play at skittles neither; them as vould pay if they could, and gets low by being boxed up. I'll tell you wot it is, sir; them as is always a-idlin' ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... everybody as come near her, she burst a blood-vessel one mornin', and died too; and a happy release it was, both for herself and the old paupers, male and female, which she used to tip over in all directions, as if they were so many skittles, and she the ball. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Sea Lord has a deal to plan, For he's, chief of all, the Transport man. He finds the Fleet in coal and victuals (Supplying the beer—if not the skittles); He sees to the bad'uns that get imprisoned, And settles what uniform's worn (or isn't).... Even the stubbornest own the sway Of the Lord of Food and the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various
... wooden ball, jerked a dangling cord at her elbow, then stood looking me straight in the face as the ball went rolling along a set of tramway lines over our heads to the other end of the shop. That was the most melancholy game at skittles I ever took part in. It seemed an age before the ball came back to us, whereupon the young lady took out the bill and my change—a halfpenny. "We haven't a farthing in the place," she said innocently, "What else will ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... division of the regiment were in the habit of going occasionally to the Auer, a lonely forest tavern, during the summer months, to play skittles. The Auer was about an hour's distance from the garrison, and lay nearly in the middle of the pine forest, which extended over the mountains and beyond the frontier. The younger men bicycled there and back, while their elders either rode or drove. Major Schrader arranged ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... "Taken it for granted? Skittles!" I said. "She must have seen they were impossible. I'm convinced, Burton, that she's seen it all along; she's merely testing you to see how you'd behave, how far you'd go for her. You needn't worry. You've gone far enough. She'll let ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... complete, 'how is it possible to suppose that you have there, on your shelves— the actual facts of history—a true record of what men, dead long ago, felt and thought?' Yet, if we have not, I for one, though of a literary turn, would sooner spend my leisure playing skittles with boors than in reading sonorous lies in ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... you to count five; paused while they drew themselves up for the charge; and the lieutenant, reading the battle in their faces—and no ordinary battle either—shouted to close the door. He shouted none too soon. In a flash the pair were upon us, and at the first blow two sailors went down like skittles. There must have been at least twenty sailors in the room, and all of them willing, yet in that superb charge the pair drove them like sheep, and the naked man had even time to drag the dresser from the clamps fastening it to the wall ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the goose, for the gander Is sauce, ye inconsequent fair! It is better to laugh than to maunder, And better is mirth than despair; And though Life's not all beer and all skittles, Yet the Sun, on occasion, can shine, And, mon Dieu! he's a fool who ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang
... half-past nine on Sunday night; and if you're late, you'll have your next week-end knocked off. And there you'll be—and you'll be quite happy. They'll give you plenty to eat, and a can of beer a day, and a bit of bacca—and they'll provide dominoes and skittles for you to play with. And you'll be the most contented set of men alive.—But you won't be men. You won't even be animals. You'll go from number one to number three thousand, a lot of numbered slaves—a new sort ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... skittle-grounds behind. These were already well filled with men of other crews, playing in groups or looking on at the players. One of these groups, as they passed, seized on the Captain, and Miller stopped with him; the rest of the St. Ambrose men, in no humor for skittles, quoits, or any relaxation except rest and grumbling, took possession of the first table and seats offered, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... grandeur; some pitched on their sides, others standing erect, still others suspended, as it were, in mid-air. It seemed to him that these boulders had formerly served for the games of bacchanalian Titans, who, after having used them as skittles or jack-stones, had ended by hurling them at one another's heads. It is most probable that He who constructed the Albula Pass, alarmed and confused by the hideous aspect of his work, did justice to it by breaking it into fragments with ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... be all beer and skittles with us, and therefore apt to pall, my cousins and I had to work pretty hard. In the first place, my dear mother did all she could to make me an infant prodigy of learning. She tried to teach me Italian, which she spoke as fluently as English or French (for ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... 'appy an' free—'appy an' free. Just like you might have noticed to-night, I noticed a knot of Chinks scrappin' on the ground all amongst the dust right in front of me. I rammed in, windmillin' all round and knocking 'em down like skittles. Seemed to me there was about ten of 'em, but allowin' for Jimmy's whisky, maybe there wasn't more than three. Anyway, they all shifted and left me standin' there in the empty street with this 'ere ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... some regard also to the choice of his amusements. If at cards, he will not be seen at cribbage, all-fours, or putt; or, in sports of exercise, at skittles, foot-ball, leap-frog, cricket, driving of coaches, &c. but will preserve a propriety in every part of his conduct; knowing, that any imitation of the manners of the mob, will unavoidably stamp him with vulgarity. There is another amusement too, which ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... gratitude to the Princess. She concluded her epistle by saying: "It is perfectly absurd of you to envy one who has to work as hard as I. You are the person to be envied. It is not all beer and skittles in a newspaper office, which is a good thing, for I don't like beer, and I don't know what skittles is or are. But I promise you that the next time I have an interesting case on hand I shall write and give you full particulars, and I ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... very rarely, you may see a party of Russian children, or young men and women, playing, in the open air, at one of two games. The first is a variant of "prisoner's base"; the other is a species of ninepins, or skittles, played with a group of uprights at which short, thick clubs are thrown. The Russian youth—those who are energetic enough to practise the game—sometimes attain considerable proficiency with these grim little weapons, and make wonderful ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... I prized you, when roaming afield, Loved you, when Life was metheglyn and skittles, Wished you the spell of remembrance to wield, Calling the scenery back and the victuals; Still, when it blows and it rains, and it irks, Here in apartments adjoining a seaview, After a meal that would terrify Turks, Somehow I feel ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... the positions of the players, who have all different names, like men fielding at cricket. The jeu de boule, which you may hear mentioned in Belgium, is quite different from the jeu de balle, and is much the same as skittles. ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Belgium • George W. T. Omond
... "'Skittles!' he says (that was a great word of his), 'you'll take parole, and go back to America and invent another Zigler, a trifle heavier in the working parts—I would. We've got more prisoners than we know what to do with as it is,' he says. 'You'll only be an additional expense to me as a taxpayer. ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... beggar had had a row with 'em up at the house and came right off to me. It wasn't any use protesting. She might have done worse, and here she 's been ever since. But she's got the temper of a fiend, I can tell you, and it ain't all skittles and beer." ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... confidences, I believe she had the skeleton secret of every soul in the place confided to her sacred keeping at some one time or other; and love stories! why, she must have been cram full of them—from the heart-breaking affair of poor little Polly Skittles, the laundress' pretty daughter, up ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Devil take the fellow! He tumbles out of one mess into another, and plays skittles with my peace of mind, and in return I'm not allowed ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... oranges and a little economised juice. He made a North Pole one morning from the whole of his bedclothes except the bolster, and reached it in a birch-bark canoe (in private life the fender), after a terrible encounter with a polar bear fashioned from the bolster and four skittles dressed up in "Da's" nightgown. After that, his father, seeking to steady his imagination, brought him Ivanboe, Bevis, a book about King Arthur, and Tom Brown's Schooldays. He read the first, and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... elaborately colored score by Field permit me, if I would, his chagrin over the result of one of these matches. He and Willis Hawkins had challenged Cowen and me to a tourney, as he called it, of five strings. His record of this "great game of skittles," all figured out by frames, strikes and spares in red, blue, yellow, and green ink, shows ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... enlarged by this tremendous experience. Materially and spiritually she will have been forced to witness and partake of the life, thought, culture, and troubles of the old world. She will have, unconsciously, assimilated much, been diverted from the beer and skittles of her isolated development in a great new country. Americans will find themselves suddenly grown up. Not till a man is grown up does he see and feel things deeply enough to venture into the dark ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... first broughte him home, a pillaged, portionlesse client, with none other to espouse his rightes, yet 'twas a pitie soone allied with contempt when we founde how emptie he was, caring for nought but archerie and skittles and the popinjaye out o' the house, and dicing and tables within, which father w^d on noe excuse permitt. Soe he had to conform, ruefullie enow, and hung piteouslie on hand for awhile. I mind me of Bess's saying about ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... forbidden fruit." Into this garden I strolled in search of the President of the College, who was not within doors. I found him in company with some of the masters, and with several young men either playing, or about to play, at skittles. On communicating the object of my visit, he granted me an immediate passport to the library—"mais, Monsieur, (added he) ce n'est rien: il y avoit autrefois quelque chose: maintenant, ce n'est qu'un amas de livres tres communs." I thanked ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... altogether there was a very vast assemblage. It was arranged that, having walked about a little, and seen some of the views which the wood afforded, and some old ruins within its borders, the party should dine, and then that various sports should take place, pony races, archery, quoits, nine-pins, skittles, throw-sticks or batons, single-stick; indeed, more than I can well remember; while swings were hung up between the trees, and two or three long planks had been placed on some felled trees, to serve as see-saws, so that all ranks and ages could find amusement. ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... saints, whose skill in cavilling, Shock'd at skittles, cards, or dice, Thinks, except for Sunday travelling, Railway gaming is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... his crime is the loss of fairy intercourse; perhaps the mildest form which punishment could take. But sometimes the chevalier d'industrie is lucky enough to secure his spoils. It is related that certain white ghosts were in the habit of playing by night at skittles on a level grass-plot on the Lueningsberg, near Aerzen, in North Germany. A journeyman weaver, who was in love with a miller's daughter, but lacked the means to marry her, thought there could be no harm in robbing the ghosts of one of the golden balls with which they used to play. He accordingly ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland |
