"Ninepins" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a bag of ninepins,' explained Cripplestraw in continuation. 'You can feel 'em quite plain, Mis'ess Anne. If ye would like to, he'll undo his sleeve in ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... warm rubbers. Wish I had a long-sleeved apron, for my bare neck and arms. Wish I might push my curls out of my eyes, or have them cut off. Wish my dress would stay up on my shoulders, and that it was not too nice for me to get on the floor to play ninepins. Wish my mamma would go to walk with me sometimes, instead of Betty. Wish she would let me lay my cheek to hers, (if I would not tumble her curls, or her collar.) Wish she would not promise me something "very nice," and then forget all about it. Wish ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... burning of her towns, villages and homesteads, her soil red with the blood of her old men, her women and children. The French armies, driven back in rout from the Belgian frontier, were being pounded to death by the German hordes. Fortresses hitherto considered impregnable were tumbling like ninepins before the terrible smashing of Austrian and German sixteen-inch guns. Already von Kluck with his four hundred thousand of conquering warriors was ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... for our car till the death, even if knives flashed out; and I think I was gasping "Police! Police!" but at that instant Mr. Jack Dane hurled himself like a catapult from the hotel. He dashed the weedy youths out of his way like ninepins, jumped to his seat, and the car and the car's occupants ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... pulpit and cross were entirely destroyed. The dragoons in St. Paul's became so troublesome to the inhabitants by their noisy brawling games and their rough interruption of passengers, that in 1651 we find them forbidden to play at ninepins from ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... resist him in former days in India. They went down before his charms like a row of ninepins before a ball. I don't deny a passing tendresse for him myself, though I was married and very happily married. So I can well comprehend how he may take a girl's fancy by storm. Sans peur et sans reproche, he must seem to her.—And so in the main, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... And do you know that you are but a thoughtless boy, and are embarking on the most weighty passage of your life as heedlessly as a giddy girl? You will find no playing at bowls or ninepins here, as you ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... rear of these he flung himself with indescribable fury, whirling the terrible handspike with such destructive effect that the astounded Spaniards, thus taken unexpectedly in the rear, went down like ninepins, while their yells of anguish and dismay quickly threw the entire crew into complete disorder. So violent, indeed, was the commotion that the attention of the Spaniards was momentarily distracted from what may ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... slept. She drank wine—that is to say, something from a bottle in the cellaret—for her stomach's sake, but if she did not fall asleep she would sometimes come into the nursery to see that the children were really playing. Now bricks, wooden hoops, ninepins, and chinaware cannot amuse forever, especially when all Fairyland is to be won by the mere opening of a book, and, as often as not, Punch would be discovered reading to Judy or tell her interminable tales. That was ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... the eternal bowling in the alley back of the restaurant. I have watched them fascinated for long periods and I have never learned what it is they are trying to do with those big "bowling balls." They have no ninepins, so they are not trying to make a ten-strike. Apparently, it is a game however, for now and then a shout of triumph proclaims that someone has won. He orders the drinks and they go ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... were; and 'twas a sight to see Nicholas Pudding come and Timothy Thomas and John Biles creep down the gallery stairs with their fiddles under their arms, and poor Dan'l Hornhead with his serpent, and Robert Dowdle with his clarionet, all looking as little as ninepins; and out they went. The pa'son might have forgi'ed 'em when he learned the truth o't, but the squire would not. That very week he sent for a barrel- organ that would play two-and-twenty new psalm-tunes, so exact and particular that, however sinful inclined you was, you could ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... to meet them; with two motions rapid as light and almost contemporaneous, he caught Hodges between the eyes with his fist and drove his head like a battering-ram into Fry's belly. Smack! ooff! and the two powerful men went down like ninepins. ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... the cock of the ward, would soon be the cock of the ordinary, and would win ten times as much at gleek and primero, as I used to do at put and beggar- my-neighbour—and turn up doublets with the dice, as busily as I was wont to trowl down the ninepins in the skittle-ground—and then you said I should bring you such news out of the ordinary as should make us all, when used as you knew how to use it—and now you see what is to ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... box of ninepins very much the same game can be played. In wet weather, in the hall, a box ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... of intense happiness on his features, he stood over the victim of the accident, listening to his groans as if to the sweetest music. When the crowd of spectators had swelled to a closely packed circle William saw a violent commotion in the crowd opposite him. Men were hurled aside like ninepins by the impact of some moving body that clove them like the rush of a tornado. With elbows, umbrella, hat-pin, tongue, and fingernails doing their duty, Violet Seymour forced her way through the mob of onlookers ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... of Lee-Metford and revolver bullets their bravery vanished like breath from the face of a looking-glass. They hesitated, and a rain of bullets wrought terrible havoc amongst their ranks. On every side the fighting-men of Bekwando went down like ninepins—about half a dozen only sprang forward for a hand-to-hand fight, the remainder, with shrieks of despair, fled back to the shelter of the forest, and not one of them again ever showed a bold front to the white man. Trent, for a moment or two, was busy, for a burly savage, who ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and bending as low as possible, we started up. We had to pass right in the line of fire. The men began to fall like ninepins. God be thanked that I was able to run as I did. I thought my heart would burst, and was about to throw myself on the ground, unable to continue, when your image and that of Bolli rose before my eyes, and I ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... cities stood in a plain, but a few miles apart, and in a straight line on the banks of the river. The king had just sat down before the first, vowing that he would knock them down, one after the other, like a row of ninepins. ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... saw that, sor, of course," put in Garry, pouring out some brandy into a tumbler which he proceeded to fill up with water—"aqua pura," he called it. "I've shtrapped it on ag'in now, and it looks as nate as ninepins. But jist dhrink this, colonel, dear. It'll warrm the cockles of your heart, sure, an' put ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... to hear of the different plans which the poor miners invented to pass the time during the trying season of rains. Of course, poker and euchre, whist and ninepins, to say nothing of monte and faro, are now in constant requisition. But as a person would starve to death on toujours des perdrix, so a man cannot always be playing cards. Some literary bipeds, I have been told, reduced to the last degree of intellectual destitution, in a beautiful spirit ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... that is not true, for Farmer Price says we have all as much right to it as he has. He wants to rob us of our playground. I wish he and Bab, or Miss Barbara, as I suppose we must now call her, were a hundred miles away, I do. Just yesterday she knocked down my ninepins on purpose as she passed with her ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... Bob, "the only thing that the Church has yet done is to forbid and to frown. We have abundance of tracts against dancing, whist-playing, ninepins, billiards, operas, theatres,—in short, anything that young people would be apt to like. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church refused to testify against slavery, because of political diffidence, but made up for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... Idler, that I first heard "Blow the Man Down," "Flying Cloud," and "Whisky, Johnny, Whisky." Oh, it was brave. I was beginning to grasp the meaning of life. Here was no commonplace, no Oakland Estuary, no weary round of throwing newspapers at front doors, delivering ice, and setting up ninepins. All the world was mine, all its paths were under my feet, and John Barleycorn, tricking my fancy, enabled me to anticipate the life of adventure for which ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... volume to describe all the sights of this wondrous fair, the church crowded with worshippers, the halt and sick praying for healing, the churchyard full of traders, the sheriff proclaiming new laws, the young men bowling at ninepins, pedlars shouting their wares, players performing the miracle play on a movable stage, bands of pipers, lowing oxen, neighing horses, and bleating sheep. It was a merry sight ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... Clapperton and Denham—the towering masses of granite which contrast so strongly with the southern swamps; upstanding outcrops resembling cathedrals and castellations in ruins; boulders like footballs of enormous dimensions; pyramids a thousand feet high; and solitary cones which rise like giant ninepins. We know too little of the lands lying south-east of the confluence to determine the sequence of the chain, whose counterforts may give rise to the Eastern 'Oil Rivers.' It is not connected with the Peak ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... ought to be put in jail. Will had been showing me how to wrestle, and he had taught me such a good twist, that I caught Archie on, and I thought I'd just show grandma—just barely show her, auntie, and I put my foot around her ankle, and somehow, she went right over like ninepins, and doubled up her foot. Oh, grandma! can ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... objects of wonder presented themselves. On a level spot in the center was a company of odd-looking personages playing at ninepins. They were dressed in a quaint outlandish fashion; some wore short doublets, others jerkins, with long knives in their belts, and most of them had enormous breeches of similar style with that of the guide's. Their visages, too, were peculiar; one had a large beard, broad ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... rocking-horses! And there was not to be found a book In the whole city, but the houses were crammed with toys from the top to the bottom,—tops, hoops, balls, battle-doors, bows and arrows, guns, peep-shows, drums and trumpets, marbles, ninepins, tumblers, kites, and hundreds upon hundreds more, for there you found every toy that ever was made in the world, besides thousands of large wax dolls, all in different court-dresses. And directly Joujou began to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... inclined rather to accept 3000 B.C. as the time that represents this era. Weber, in his Lectures on Sanskrit Literature (p. 7), rightly says that to seek for an exact date is fruitless labor; while Whitney compares Hindu dates to ninepins—set up only to be bowled down again. Schroeder, in his Indiens Literatur und Cultur, suggests that the prior limit may be "a few centuries earlier than 1500," agreeing with Weber's preferred reckoning; but Whitney, Grassmann, and Benfey provisionally assume 2000 B.C. as ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... itself over her; there seemed something inspiring in standing with him on the free heights that left all the clogging vapors and fogs of moral problems somewhere below; where the sun shone and the clear wind blew and talk was a game of bowls with Puritan ideals for ninepins. He went on amusing her till the curtain rose, with a pretended theory of Mohammedology which he was working at. Just as for the Christian Apologist the Old Testament was full of hints of the New, so he contended was the ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... still avoiding the square, I roamed round the little town, distracting my mind by forcing an interest in what was going on. The Highlanders were happy, noisy, and full of confidence—not unjustly, for so far they had played ninepins with the Royal troops. Everywhere they were hard at it, sharpening dirks and claymores and furbishing muskets, and such of their talk as I could understand was all of battle imminent. In the churchyard I found a number of them practising shooting, with a ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... room, tipped over a table, and deluged an artist and his affinity with hot chocolate before they could escape from the avalanche. Chairs went over like ninepins. Stands collapsed. Men grunted and shouted advice. Girls screamed. The Sea Siren was being wrecked by a ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... well as you do that you musn't speak to people unless you've been introduced to them. But the phrase "brother artists" had played ninepins with her ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... the characteristic of a mechanical combination to be generally REVERSIBLE. A child is delighted when he sees the ball in a game of ninepins knocking down everything in its way and spreading havoc in all directions; he laughs louder than ever when the ball returns to its starting-point after twists and turns and waverings of every kind. In other words, the mechanism just described is laughable even when rectilinear, ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... history simple and orderly, they forget to make it human. There is an order and progress, perhaps, but an order and progress of what? Of men? Of human souls, self-moved? No, of sticks floating on a current, of straws blown by the wind! Men, according to this theory, are but ninepins in an alley which Nature sets up only to bowl them down again; and what avails it, if Nature makes improvement and learns to set them up better and better? The triumphs are hers, not theirs. They are but ninepins, after all. Progress? Yes, ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... him, and giving him a violent push sat himself down in his old place. Presently more men fell down the chimney, one after the other, who brought nine thigh-bones and two skulls, which they set up, and then they began to play at ninepins. At this the youth wished also to play, so he asked whether he might join them. "Yes, if you have money!" "Money enough," he replied, "but your balls are not quite round"; so saying he took up the skulls, and, placing them on his lathe, ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... crave neither pension nor sinecure. I intend to follow the army, and, if God calls me hence, then I shall be willing to rest; but before I go I hope to mow down a few Turks' heads to take to St. Peter, for him to use as balls when he plays ninepins. But, if your imperial majesty will grant it, you might do me ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... and smiled bitterly to himself as he recalled to mind his last appearance as 'Red Ruben, or the Strangled Babe,' his debut as 'Gaunt Gibeon, the Blood-sucker of Bexley Moor,' and the furore he had excited one lovely June evening by merely playing ninepins with his own bones upon the lawn-tennis ground. And after all this, some wretched modern Americans were to come and offer him the Rising Sun Lubricator, and throw pillows at his head! It was quite ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... temperature, a temperature that it seemed impossible to lower or raise. She could not fancy him getting angry about anything. Had she seen him as in the past during one of his rare sprees, fighting the crowd and tossing men about like ninepins, she would have said: 'This is not the same man'—and maybe she would have ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... finance. How monstrous that scandal was can never be known save by such confidential agents as myself. The honour and careers of many of the chief men in France were at stake. You have seen a group of ninepins standing, all so rigid, and prim, and unbending. Then there comes the ball from far away and pop, pop, pop—there are your ninepins on the floor. Well, imagine some of the greatest men in France as these ninepins and then this Monsieur Caratal was the ball which could be seen coming ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... squeaked on to the ship after the roll-call at Bombay. These were solemnly drawn up in a line as defaulters and magisterially called to attention to receive judgment. On coming to attention they over-balanced with the regularity of ninepins in a row: and after three attempts the major had to harangue them standing (nominally) at ease. Even so, his admonition was rather impaired by his suddenly sitting down on the deck, and having to leave rather hurriedly for his cabin ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... pull yet a little. At he's gulled and esto. At trudgepig. At the torture. At the magatapies. At the handruff. At the horn. At the click. At the flowered or Shrovetide ox. At honours. At the madge-owlet. At pinch without laughing. At tilt at weeky. At prickle me tickle me. At ninepins. At the unshoeing of the ass. At the cock quintin. At the cocksess. At tip and hurl. At hari hohi. At the flat bowls. At I set me down. At the veer and turn. At earl beardy. At rogue and ruffian. At the old mode. At bumbatch touch. At draw the spit. At the mysterious trough. At put ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... take their rise from the "Knickerbocker Legend," and they are thoroughly American in coloring and flavor, even if they did happen to be written in England. No story in our literature is better known than that of Rip Van Winkle watching Hendrick Hudson and his ghostly crew playing ninepins in the Catskill Mountains and quaffing the magic liquor which caused him ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... beauties assembled on its straight walks and smooth sward. Under one of those graceful cloisters, which were the taste of the day, and had been recently built and gayly decorated, the earl was stopped in his path by a group of ladies playing at closheys (ninepins) of ivory; [Narrative of Louis of Bruges, Lord Grauthuse. Edited by Sir F. Madden, "Archaelogia," 1836.] and one of these fair dames, who excelled the rest in her skill, had just bowled down the central or crowned pin,—the king of the closheys. ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... impetus, which knocked him insensible. Dave, followed by Johnny, immediately rushed aft, and took the helmsman's place, although it required all the strength of the two boys to hold on and save the ship from broaching-to, when her spars would have been swept off like ninepins, and a clean sweep made of her bulwarks, and everything on her decks fore and aft, if possible, she ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... when, at the same time, I saw the neighbors wandering through their gardens, taking care of their flowers, the children playing, parties of friends enjoying themselves, and could hear the bowls rolling and the ninepins dropping, it early excited within me a feeling of solitude, and a sense of vague longing resulting from it, which, conspiring with the seriousness and awe implanted in me by nature, exerted its influence at an early age, and showed itself more ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... Ay did I, once—and got knocked down as sharp as ninepins. Standing up! I'd love to see thee try it. Thou'd not be right end ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... knoll, a few fired and missed, the others, neutrals to their will, stood fixed in wonder. Four or five, as the runner neared, sprang out to intercept, but flew apart like ninepins. The watchers in the boat saw the halberd flash high in the late afternoon sun, the frightened pony swerve, and his rider go down with the one sweep ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... Baboon. This coming to Mrs. Bull's ears, when John Bull came home, he found all his family in an uproar. Mrs. Bull, you must know, was very apt to be choleric. "You sot," says she, "you loiter about alehouses and taverns, spend your time at billiards, ninepins, or puppet-shows, or flaunt about the streets in your new gilt chariot, never minding me nor your numerous family. Don't you hear how Lord Strutt has bespoke his liveries at Lewis Baboon's shop? Don't you see how that old fox steals away your customers, and turns you out of your business every day, ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... which the road meandered, was rich and beautiful; the weather very fine; and for many miles the Kaatskill mountains, where Rip Van Winkle and the ghostly Dutchmen played at ninepins one memorable gusty afternoon, towered in the blue distance, like stately clouds. At one point, as we ascended a steep hill, athwart whose base a railroad, yet constructing, took its course, we came upon ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... Spaniard of the Foreign Legion in our hospital who had been to Cambridge, and had the "outside" eyes on all things French. In his view je m'en foutism has a hold of the French army. Strange if it had not! Clear, quick brains cannot stand Fate's making ninepins of mankind year after year like this. Fortunately for France, the love of her sons has never been forced; it has grown like grass and simple wild herbs in the heart, alongside the liberty to criticise and ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy |
