"Battledore" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... better at the moment," answered Wilding with a touch of sharpness. He turned to the frowning and perplexed Duke—whose mind was being tossed this way and that, like a shuttlecock upon the battledore of these men's words. "Your Grace," he said, "forgive me that I speak it if hear it you will, or forbid me to say it if your resolve ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... a shuttlecock may be toss'd With the hand of fate for a battledore; But it matters much for your sweet soul lost, As much as a million souls ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... 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 them ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... 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 ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... are little they have plenty of play and fun when they are not in school. In both towns and villages the streets are the playground, and here they play ball, or battledore and shuttlecock, or ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore
... many-flowered brocade, with scarlet broidered pouch hanging at her right 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. ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... father's death, which had happened when Dick was a child at Dublin, not quite five years of age. "That was the first sensation of grief," Dick said, "I ever knew. I remember I went into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping beside it. I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a-beating the coffin, and calling papa; on which my mother caught me in her arms, and told me in a flood of tears papa could not hear me, and would play with me no more, for they ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... into the room where my father's body lay, and my mother sat weeping alone by it. I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a-beating the coffin and calling 'Papa,' for I know not how, I had some slight idea that he was locked up there."—STEELE, The ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... and this suddenly lifted a slender voice and announced five. She turned round on her stool and sat staring at the clock. She smiled with the corners of her mouth down. "Home," she said, "and begin again. It's like battledore and shuttlecock.... ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... discovered this by seeing a little bunch of yellow peg-tops change into a plateful of pears while she chanced to be looking at them; and a moment afterward she caught a doll's saucepan, that was hanging in one corner of the window, just in the act of quietly turning into a battledore with a red morocco handle. This struck her as being such a remarkable performance that she immediately began looking at one thing after another, and watching the various changes, until she was ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... the theatre, he could write, and write truly, to his friend Forster: "The moral of this is, that there is no place like home; and that I thank God most heartily for having given me a quiet spirit and a heart that won't hold many people. I sigh for Devonshire Terrace and Broadstairs, for battledore and shuttlecock; I want to dine in a blouse with you and Mac (Maclise).... On Sunday evening, the 17th July, I shall revisit my household gods, please heaven. I wish the ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... chinkiest ear. Yet all this tune hath envy's glance On me looked more and more askance. From mouth to mouth such comments run: 'Our friend indeed is Fortune's son. Why, there he was, the other day, Beside Maecenas at the play; And at the Campus, just before, They had a bout at battledore.' Some chilling news through lane and street Spreads from the Forum. All I meet Accost me thus—'Dear friend, you're so Close to the gods, that you must know: About the Dacians, have you heard Any fresh tidings? ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... it without extensive knowledge of the beliefs which it reflects were mere waste of time. By art I do not mean painting and sculpture but every kind of decoration, and most kinds of pictorial representation—the image of a boy's kite or a girl's battledore not less than the design upon a lacquered casquet or enameled vase,—the figure upon a workman's trowel not less than the pattern of the girdle of a princess,—the shape of the paper doll or wooden rattle bought for a baby, not ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... period. The eighteenth-century boy, in spite of his grown-up clothes, was fond of all sorts of out-of-door games. Master Bunbury could doubtless match a boy of his age to-day at marbles, tops, kites, battledore, and hop-scotch, and teach him besides many now-forgotten sports, as "bally-cally," ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... its far end, by a statue rising from a fountain, in front of which a little girl with reddish hair was playing with a shuttlecock; when, from the path, another little girl, who was putting on her cloak and covering up her battledore, called out sharply: "Good-bye, Gilberte, I'm going home now; don't forget, we're coming to you this evening, after dinner." The name Gilberte passed close by me, evoking all the more forcibly her whom it labelled ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... tubs, in which were orange and 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 ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... forego her misguided love of power and her tendency to 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 ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... the duke, by Mr. Fothergill's aid, had entangled him; but he had only broken out of one captivity into another. Money is a serious thing; and when gone cannot be had back by a shuffle in the game, or a fortunate blow with the battledore, as may political power, or reputation, or fashion. One hundred thousand pounds gone, must remain as gone, let the person who claims to have had the honour of advancing it be Mrs. B. or my Lord C. No lucky dodge can ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... full, you must see it in the laboring quarters, in those dismal streets which it illumines, which it makes broader by closing the shops, housing the great vans, leaving the space free for the romping of children with clean faces and in their best clothes, and games of battledore mingled with circling flocks of swallows under some porch in old Paris. You must see it in the swarming, fever-stricken faubourgs where from early morning you feel it hovering, soothing and grateful, over the silent factories, passing with the clang of ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... intelligence of its voting citizens, how long can the foundations of ours remain secure if we continue to enfranchise ignorance and vice and disfranchise intelligence and virtue?" The action of Legislatures in past years was depicted as "playing shuttlecock and battledore with the amendment, passing it in one House to defeat it in another, in a hypocritical desire to appear favorable and inspire us with hope in order to retain the small amount of influence they think we possess, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... and used exclusively by her. The frames are of the finest over-burnish, the plush upholstery being decorated with the rarest specimens of art needlework. On one of the little tables you will note a battledore and shuttlecock, with another thrown upon the floor, as though the player had been suddenly interrupted in the midst of her play. Very ordinary make and shape are these toys, such as you may see in any middle-class English home, and each of them looking like ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... and Clery gave 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 with riddles, ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... man is always the hopeless man. Between no God anywhere and the one God who is everywhere, there is no middle ground. Either we are children, buffeted about by fate and circumstances, with events tossing souls about in an eternal game of battledore and shuttlecock, or else the world is our Father's house, and God standeth within the shadow, keeping watch above His own. For the man who believes in God, who allies himself to nature, who makes the universe his partner, there is no defeat, and no ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... am there perhaps he will be persuaded to stay at home to tea?" she chuckled mischievously. "Well, my dear, I'll come, and we will play at battledore and shuttlecock to your heart's content. But if the young man turns and rends us for our pains—and I have a shrewd notion that that's the sort of young man he ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... come avay," 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 ...
— The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick - A Lecture • Frank Lockwood
... choky little gurgle in her throat Aunt Jane fell limply against me. It was too much. All day long she had been tossed back and forth like a shuttlecock by the battledore of emotion. She had borne the shock of Mr. Tubbs's sordid greed for gold, his disloyalty to the expedition, his coldness to herself; she had been shaken by the tender stress of the reconciliation, had been captured by pirates, and now suffered the supreme blow of this ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... Greek grammar, which struck me as being an interesting-looking book, for hitherto, I had never even seen a Greek letter. I went to my Dames, where I found Tyrrel ma, and Kennedy, who shared my room, playing at battledore. ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... The snow-shoe, which much resembles the racket or battledore, an instrument used for striking the ball in the game of tennis. This name was given for the ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... gardener came by, and seeing Fanny digging away and making herself very hot, promised her that in the evening he would put the ground to rights. As she found that Norman was not disposed to garden, she invited him to have a game of battledore and shuttlecock on ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... last for about half after three, the billiards were interrupted, and Philip, pronouncing the rain to be almost over, invited Guy to take a walk, and they set out in a very gray wet mist, while Charlotte and Amy commenced a vigorous game at battledore ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to me the plumules or battledore scales on the wings of certain families and genera of butterflies, almost invariably changing in form with the species and genera in proportion to other changes, and always constant in each species yet confined to the males, and so small and mixed up with the other scales as to produce no effect ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... and tossed about ever, like a battered shuttlecock, by the battledore currents, some four of which contend for the mastery throughout the livelong day in that wonderful waterway, the English Channel; two always setting east, relieving each other in turn, and two west, with a cross-tide coming atop of them, twice in every twenty-four ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... engagement on market-days, lest Granny, as she called Mrs. Johnson, should catch cold by serving in the shop. There Lucy Porter took her place, standing behind the counter, nor thought it a disgrace to thank a poor person who purchased from her a penny battledore [10]. ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... slightly attempted; but it is not really liked: too many balls are 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 unless stopped ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... canoe setting the example, the rest were easily persuaded to come on board, to the number of fifty men. Only two weapons were seen among them; these were made of green talc, and called patoo-patoo, being shaped somewhat like a pointed battledore, with a short handle and sharp edges. They were well contrived for close fighting, and would certainly split the thickest skull at a single blow. The sad truth of this some of our countrymen were afterwards to experience, when not far from this spot the greater part of a ship's company ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... wife was up a pear tree gathering nine corns of buttered beans to pay St. James's rent. St. James was in a meadow mowing oat cakes; he heard a noise, hung his scythe to his heels, stumbled at the battledore, tumbled over the barn door ridge, and broke his shins against a bag of moonshine that stood behind the stairs-foot door; and if that isn't true, you know as well as I ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... 'It's blithering irony to talk of us Leura squatters as representing capital. We're all playing a sort of battledore and shuttlecock game—tossed about between drought and plenty—boom and slump. A kick in the beam and one end is up and the other end down. There's Windeatt, who will be ruined if his wool-shed is destroyed and his shearing ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... The essence of the jest consists in some catchword suggested by a political event, an incident in the police courts, a street song, or a bit of burlesque at some theatre, and forgotten in a month. Anything and everything serves to keep up a game of battledore and shuttlecock with words and ideas. The diorama, a recent invention, which carried an optical illusion a degree further than panoramas, had given rise to a mania among art students for ending every word with rama. The Maison Vauquer had caught the infection from ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac |
