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More "Ninepins" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 blame. The poilu cares ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... up-hill and the wind against us. John Glass, the clerk, came to meet us to offer his help. There were seven or eight present. Returning it was worse; the wind was at our backs, and at different times Ellen and I were blown down like ninepins. I have since been told by the people, "When you hear a puff coming, stand or duck till it is over and then go on." On these windy days the dust and litter that come from the thatch are ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... Durty December doe, Thou with a face as old as Erra Pater, such a Prognosticating nose: thou thing that ten years since has left to be a woman, outworn the expectation of a Baud; and thy dry bones can reach at nothing now, but gords or ninepins, pray goe fetch a ...
— The Scornful Lady • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... new 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 ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... 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
... fascination reasserted 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
... to be met by a blinding fire 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. ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was a bunch not to be trifled with, a quiet group of thirty bronzed faces, some grinning with the anticipated joy of the combat they loved, some grim as death itself, each affectionately twirling a gleaming gun. One overt act on the part of the circus men, and down they would go like ninepins and they knew it—knew it so well that, within two minutes after they had assembled, all dodged into and lost themselves in the throng of onlookers like ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... certain to send it assistance. These 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
... were audible. These sounds were so deadened by the clammy mist that they might have proceeded from some gnome's workshop deep in the bowels of the earth. The blows of a pile-driver at work on the Surrey shore suggested to Kerry's mind the phantom crew of Hendrick Hudson at their game of ninepins in the Katskill ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... rolled across the 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 cyclone from ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... Bosse was like knocking down the first of a row of ninepins, but none could have suspected that the last of these stood ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... you stay a few thousand miles away. Otherwise, your preconceived notions are almost sure to totter to their foundations; and nothing is more annoying than to have elaborately built-up, delightfully logical theories, played ninepins with by an old greybeard of a black, who apparently objects to his beliefs being classified, docketed, and pigeon-holed, until he has ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... the Inn yards" found few participants in New England. In 1692 the Andover innkeeper was ordered not to allow the playing of "Dice, Cards, Tables, Quoits, Loggits, Bowles, Ninepins or any other Unlawful Game in his house yard Garden or Backside after Saturday P.M." Henry Cabot Lodge says the shovelboard of Shakespeare's time was almost the only game not expressly prohibited. A Puritan minister, Rev. Peter Thatcher, of Milton, bought in 1679 a "pack of ninepins and bowle," ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... garden, but 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 gown trailing ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... where supper was ready for him. "After he had supped the King had him brought immediately to the Queen's own chamber, where she and her ladies were playing at the marteaux [a game played with small balls of different colours]; and some of her ladies were playing at closheys [ninepins] of ivory, and dancing, and some at divers other games: the which sight was full pleasant to them. Also the King danced with my Lady Elizabeth, his eldest daughter. In the morning when Matins was done, the King heard, in his own chapel, Our Lady-Mass, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... are all big men; and our weight and impetus, and the surprise, were too much for them; we burst through them, standing as they did four or five deep, as if they had been reeds. They gave a yell of rage and astonishment as they went down like ninepins; but we scarcely saw it, for as we went through them the musketry fire broke out round ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... which went down directly opposite my windows. And 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
... principal street of Algiers. Selecting the Hebrews, he drove before him a throng of twenty, dressed in all the colors of the rainbow, who allowed themselves to be knocked down with the obedience of ninepins. A Frenchman stopped the maniac after he had killed one Jew and wounded several, none of them ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... the company of reporters, engender a familiarity of reference to eminent persons, and Andrew had in his time struck down the champions of woman's rights as a boy plays with his ninepins. ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... never was," the latter volunteered. "The telegraph wires are all down for miles and miles. There won't be no trains running along this line come many a week, and as for trees—why, it's as though some one had been playing ninepins in Squire Fellowes's park. When the morning do come, for sure there will be things to be seen. This way, sir. Be careful ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of a long and perilous life, and he has appeared to me in almost every shape; but I shall never forget that Thirtieth of January in the year '20, when my Grandmother died. I have seen men all gashed and cloven about—a very mire of blood and wounds,—and heads lying about on the floor like ninepins, among the Turks, where a man's life is as cheap as the Halfpenny Hatch. I was with that famous Commander Baron Trenck[D] when his Pandours—of whom I was one—broke into Mutiny. He drew a pistol from his belt, and said, "I shall decimate you." And he began to count Ten, "one, two, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... That ravine of La Caillette was a boiling caldron of men. It bubbled over with smoke and fire. Once, when their second wave had broken just in front of us, we went out to hurry the fragments down the hill. Then the guns from Douaumont and the village of Vaux hammered us. Our men fell like ninepins. Our lieutenant called to us to turn back. Just then a shell tore away his right leg at the knee. It hung by the skin and tendons. He was a brave lad. I could not leave him to die there. So I hoisted him on my back. Three shots struck me. ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... the Cagots of Rehouilhes rose up against the inhabitants of the neighbouring town of Lourdes, and got the better of them, by their magical powers as it is said. The people of Lourdes were conquered and slain, and their ghastly, bloody heads served the triumphant Cagots for balls to play at ninepins with! The local parliaments had begun, by this time, to perceive how oppressive was the ban of public opinion under which the Cagots lay, and were not inclined to enforce too severe a punishment. Accordingly, the decree of the parliament of Toulouse ...
— An Accursed Race • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the unfortunate prey hasn't swallowed his first cup of tea before she has wedded him in imagination to one of her girls—"How do you like Mr CHOSE?" "Like him? What is there to like? He's the same as all the rest of the men, and they're as like as a box of ninepins..." ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... Irving's story in "The Sketch Book," was a great drunkard, and was driven from his home in the Catskill Mountains, one night, by his wife. Wandering among the mountains, he fell in with the ghosts of Hendrick Hudson and his crew, with whom he played a game of ninepins. Upon drinking the liquor which they offered him, however, he immediately fell into a deep sleep which lasted for twenty years. The above lesson recounts the events that befell him when he returned to ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... rang out, 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
... origin, though in many cases they have been considerably developed and improved. Kayles—derived from the French word quilles—was a great favourite in the fourteenth century, and was undoubtedly the parent of our modern game of ninepins. Kayle-pins were not confined in those days to any particular number, and they were generally made of a conical shape and set up in ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... directions, as if distorted by the sunken reefs. The eastern jamb is formed by Tiran Island; the western by the sandy Ras Nasrani, whose glaring tawny slope is dotted with dark basaltic cones, detached and disposed like great ninepins. Beyond this cape the Sinaitic coast, as far as Ras Mohammed, the apex of the triangle, is fretted with little indentations; hence its name, El-Shurum—"the Creeks." Near one of these baylets, Wellsted chanced upon "volcanic rocks which are not found in any ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... one against another, like ninepins: and Roy, hating the man, turned sharply away. But rebuke was futile. One could do nothing. It was that which galled him. One could only pass on; mentally brushing ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
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