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Croquet   Listen
noun
Croquet  n.  
1.
An open-air game in which two or more players endeavor to drive wooden balls, by means of mallets, through a series of hoops or arches set in the ground according to some pattern.
2.
The act of croqueting.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Croquet" Quotes from Famous Books



... together in the outer room, and, later, he would pass Bunning in the Court without knowing him. He would be introduced one day to Margaret Craven and find the house in which she lived a charming comfortable place, full of light and air, with a croquet lawn at the back of it, and Mrs. Craven, a nice ordinary middle-aged woman, stout possibly and fond of gossip. And instead of being President of the Wolves and a person of importance in the College he would be once again his old self, knowing nobody, scornful of the whole ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole

... her sweet April call and mossy nest under the bridge or woodshed, or under the shelving rocks; or the brown thrasher—mocking thrush—calling half furtively, half archly from the treetop back in the bushy pastures: "Croquet, croquet, hit it, hit it, come to me, come to me, tight it, tight it, you're out, you're out," with many musical interludes; or the chewink, rustling the leaves and peering under the bushes at you; or the pretty little oven-bird, walking round and round you in the woods, or ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... dooryard full of rubbish, in order to reach a so-called garden which had never spoken a civil word to the house nor got one from it. Now, the understanding is that every part of the premises, every outdoor thing on the premises—path, fence, truck-patch, stable, stable-yard, hen-yard, tennis or croquet-court—everything is either a part of the garden or is so reasonably related to it that from whatever point one views the place he ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable

... office-buildings and from their five-o'clock cocktails at the club, into the open air; and they found that the open air was good. So around nearly every golf club other sports grew up. Polo grounds were laid out by the side of the links, croquet lawns appeared on one side of the club-house and lawn-tennis nets arose on the other, while traps for the clay-pigeon shooters were placed safely ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... anybody else thinks he has given up cricket for ludo or croquet or oranges and lemons, then he can devote himself to planning out a little course for that too—or anyhow to removing a few plantains in preparation for it. In fact, ladies and gentlemen, all I want is for ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne

... November week in Plymouth, Priscilla Mullins and John Alden may have "recreated" themselves with this ancient form of croquet—if any recreation were possible for the four women of the colony, who, with the help of one servant and a few young girls or maidekins, had to prepare and cook food for three days for one hundred and twenty hungry men, ninety-one of them being Indians, with an unbounded capacity ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... glimmer, gold and red, is thrown over the whole sky. Keeping close beside the ever-widening stream, we dash through little clachans on the bank, beneath long, over-arching avenues of trees, and past the gates of ivy-mantled homes of blessed outlook. Here a croquet party stops playing, for the grass is getting wet with evening dew, and there, in the river, and up to the knees in it, are half a dozen anglers sweeping the wave with their spurious fly. Peebles is not ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... Society. Both ladies were on easy and friendly terms with all that was best in Morningside Park society; they had an afternoon once a month that was quite well attended, they sometimes gave musical evenings, they dined out and gave a finish to people's dinners, they had a full-sized croquet lawn and tennis beyond, and understood the art of bringing people together. And they never talked of anything at all, never discussed, never even encouraged gossip. They ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... caring much about books, is still gentleman enough to value good breeding, felt a relief in exchanging the forms of his native language without the shock of hearing that a bishop was "a swell" or a croquet-party "awfully jolly." ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... hours of leisure when life is most real. The family games after supper, the group around the piano singing old and modern songs, the reading aloud by one member of the circle, the cracking of nuts and the popping of corn, the picnic supper on the lawn, the tennis court or croquet ground, the home parties, the guests ever-welcome at meals, these are but items in a possible scorecard of the sociability of the home. We are giving much thought to all sorts of group activities, but how much attention have we given ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson

... windows and looked out on the square. There, between the trees, was a space of beautiful soft green, and some children dressed in bright dresses, and attended by a governess in sober black, had just begun to play croquet. An elderly lady with a small white dog was walking along one of the graveled paths. An old man was pruning ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... one day I got a pad of monogrammed telegraph blanks at the clerk's desk and began to wire to all my friends for get-away money. My doctor and I played one game of croquet on the golf links and went to sleep ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry

... you already know. Please remember that he will never take a prize for his beauty—nor even for his grace. He has a pleasing way with girls, not only of not talking himself, but of making it nearly impossible for them to talk. For instance, if a girl asks me if I play croquet, which by the way, is becoming very passe (three last lines verge on poetry) being replaced by a new game called tennis, I probably say, "No. Do you?" In this way I make croquet good for a ten minutes' ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... in an old gown of the Henniker's, which was found in the boot-room, and enact that favourite character's part, which he did to the life. We also made out our own "reports" for home, and played a most spirited game of croquet in the hall, with potatoes for balls and brooms for mallets, besides treating our prisoners to a ravishing concert by an orchestra of one dinner-bell, two dish-covers, two combs and paper, and ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... light without glare, and heat without oppressiveness. The "packet" was a stoutly-built boat, 45 feet long by 6 broad, propelled by one man sculling at the stern, and another pulling a short broad-bladed oar, which worked in a wistaria loop at the bow. It had a croquet mallet handle about 18 inches long, to which the man gave a wriggling turn at each stroke. Both rower and sculler stood the whole time, clad in umbrella hats. The fore part and centre carried bags of rice and crates of pottery, and the hinder part had a thatched roof which, when ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... fork open, and he worried with the wheel. At the end of ten minutes I suggested he should hold the forks, and that I should handle the wheel; and we changed places. At the end of his first minute he dropped the machine, and took a short walk round the croquet lawn, with his hands pressed together between his thighs. He explained as he walked that the thing to be careful about was to avoid getting your fingers pinched between the forks and the spokes of the wheel. I replied I was convinced, from my own experience, that there was much truth in what ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome

... least—there were the girls about the garden; and here were we on the river; and there was more than one handkerchief waved as we went by. It caused quite a stir in my heart; and yet how we should have wearied and despised each other, these girls and I, if we had been introduced at a croquet-party! But this is a fashion I love: to kiss the hand or wave a handkerchief to people I shall never see again, to play with possibility, and knock in a peg for fancy to hang upon. It gives the traveller a jog, reminds him ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson

... old friends of mine and they made it a point each year to have me come, generally in July, when many people gathered there. We had passed a very patriotic day on July 4 and the enthusiasm had not yet died out and the decorations were still in evidence. Our days were spent in fishing, playing croquet, in bathing and climbing the mountains. There was one high peak that no one had ever attempted and there was considerable banter between the guests and the proprietor, Roop saying that no one had scaled the peak since he had become proprietor of the springs. Among ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... one chance— If he'll more gaily bear him, Play croquet, smoke, and dance, I willingly will ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert

... Kalaupapa (about three miles across the promontory, the cliff-wall, ivied with forest and yet inaccessible from steepness, on my left), go to the Sisters' home, which is a miracle of neatness, play a game of croquet with seven leper girls (90 degrees in the shade), got a little old-maid meal served me by the Sisters, and ride home again, tired enough, but not too tired. The girls have all dolls, and love dressing them. You who know so many ladies delicately ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... free admissions for the theatres, hunting "Ragamuffins" and members of the Cibber Club, and other privileged creatures, at all their places of resort. He watched for the advent of novels adapted to Georgy's capacity—lively records of croquet and dressing and love-making, from smart young Amazons in the literary ranks, or deeply interesting romances of the sensation school, with at least nine deaths in the three volumes, and a comic housemaid, or a ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... Echo Lodge after their marriage, both Diana and I spent a great deal of time with them. We became acquainted with many of the Grafton people whom we had not known before, and among others, the family of Mr. Mack Leith. We often went up to the Leiths in the evening to play croquet. Millie and Margaret Leith were very nice girls, and the boys were nice, too. Indeed, we liked every one in the family, except poor old Miss Emily Leith. We tried hard enough to like her, because she seemed to like Diana and ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... they came to the second summer. Miss Gertrude Lawrence was a belle now, and the great house was constantly filled with guests. The Lawrence equipages were seen in every direction. Mrs. Minor was up frequently, in grand state. The lawn was gay with croquet-parties, the evenings were brilliant with lights and music: they had two elegant garden-parties, when the grounds were illuminated with colored lanterns, and the teas were festivals in themselves. Fred had brought home two college chums, and for ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... before Bill, and each had realized his own awkwardness and insignificance. Poor Fluff, almost reduced to tears, with a big black bruise upon his white forehead, confessed that he preferred peaceful games—like croquet, and intended to apply for a doctor's certificate of exemption. Demanding sympathy, ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell

... white skirts till they took on the monstrous contours of Victorian crinolines, a sunken memory stirred in her that was almost romance—a memory of a dusty volume of Punch in an aunt's house in infancy: pictures of crinoline hoops and croquet hoops and some pretty story, of which perhaps they were a part. This half-perceptible fragrance in her thoughts faded almost instantly, and Diana Duke entered the house even more promptly than her companion. Tall, slim, aquiline, ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton

... the West of England I made the acquaintance of the curate, a boyish young fellow not long from Oxford, who was devoted to sport and a great killer. He was not satisfied with cricket and football in their seasons and golf and lawn tennis—he would even descend to croquet when there was nothing else— and boxing and fencing, and angling in the neighbouring streams, but he had to shoot something every day as well. And it was noticed by the villagers that the shooting ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson

... kisses. I can't understand why he never revealed to me the fact that he and Lady Allie were playmates as children. In that case, she must be considerably older than she looks. But old or young, I wish she'd stayed in England with her croquet and pat-tennis and broom-stick-cricket, instead of coming out here and majestically announcing that nothing was to be expected of a country which had no ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... following: morocco travelling-bag, stereoscope with six views, silver napkin-ring, compound microscope, lady's work-box, sheet-music or books worth $5.00. For TWENTY, at $1.60 each, select any one of the following: a fine croquet-set, a powerful opera-glass, a toilet case, Webster's Dictionary (unabridged), sheet-music or books ...
— The Nursery, No. 103, July, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... gout—or perhaps, by the bye, what I heard was that it wasn't good. I know old port and gout seem to run together in my head somehow. But if there's anything in the house your papa would like, Diana—wine, or gunpowder tea, or the eider-down coverlet off the spare bed, or the parlour croquet, to amuse him of an evening, or a new novel—surely one couldn't forfeit one's subscription by lending a book to ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... happy, mother," he repeated, with a chuckle. "It is not so long ago since it was you and I who were standing like that, and I don't remember that we were very unhappy either. It was croquet in our time, and the ladies had not reefed in their skirts quite so taut. What year would it be? Just before ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle

... struggle. With a feeble oath, he sat down on a box containing croquet implements, and ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... a rule, in a country house, 'Breakfast at eight o'clock sharp, you won't mind it being a little cold if you're late, and then we are going for a motor drive at 9.30.' Still, I think, perhaps, one ought to take a little exercise. I feel almost equal to a game of croquet this afternoon—later on—when I'm stronger. Is any one coming ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson

... lathes, files, wire-cloth, scales, steel wire, paper boxes, music stands, mouldings, carriages, sleighs, shuttles, doors, sashes, blinds, furniture, asbestos covering, blotters, crayons, drain-pipe, glue, lamp-black, machine brushes, matches, croquet sets. ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... lawns, and they had wandered down towards the river. There seemed to be nothing special to do. The tennis-lawn was not properly mowed for tennis, and anyhow the net was not out, and there seemed to be no croquet-ground anywhere. In consequence, there was nothing whatever to do but to pace up and down under the shadow of the trees a little ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade

... (for my only brother was ten years older than myself), of course I played no games, except croquet. I was brought up in a sporting home, my father being an enthusiastic fox-hunter and a good all-round sportsman. I abhorred shooting, and was badly bored by coursing and fishing. Indeed, I believe I can say with literal truth that I ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... the torments of hell. The church is opposed to the theatre, is the enemy of the opera, looks upon dancing as a crime, hates billiards, despises cards, opposes roller-skating, and even entertains a certain kind of prejudice against croquet. ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... thing here once more is that they are taking their little play and their little stage with a heavenly seriousness, all of them. You expect somebody to produce a set of flamingos at any moment and start a game of croquet among the tiny tables. ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin

... girls, and was a true friend to them. She taught them to sew, and instructed them in morals and religion. When I went to Banting some years afterwards, I found a set of modest young women who were much pleased with gifts of needles, thread, and thimbles; they also enjoyed a game of croquet after the lessons were done, and it was wonderful to see what smart taps of the mallet were fearlessly given under their bare feet; for of course the Dyaks do ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... order to distract the attention of the occupants while they were entertaining a Freshman, but otherwise we did pretty nearly what we pleased to each other—only being careful to do it first. Of course a lot of things are fair in love and war that would not be considered strictly ethical in a game of croquet. And rushing a Freshman is as near like love as anything I know of. It isn't that we love the Freshman so much. When I think of some of the trash we fought over and lost I have to laugh. But we couldn't bear the ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... dolls, the two sought the nursery and there made a discriminating collection of her choicest treasures. Her Noah's Ark, her picture-books, her colored balls and blocks, her woolly lambs that moved on wheels, her miniature croquet set, all fell into their ruthless young hands and, as a crowning crime, were dumped into the little go-cart that was the very apple of Genevieve Maud's round eyes. It squeaked under its burden as the children drew it carefully along the hall. They carried it down-stairs with exaggerated ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan

... languor they once cultivated, and walk the street with stout step, and swing the croquet mallet with a force that sends the ball through two arches, cracking the opposing ball with great emphasis. Our daughters are not ashamed to culture flower beds, and while they plant the rose in the ground a corresponding rose ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... have been as good a cook as Winnie. Whatever the reason, no one came whistling up from the bungalow after dinner to suggest "Let's hear 'Old Black Joe,'" or to offer to play a game of croquet. Presently Doctor Hugh announced that he was going to walk down to see Jack, and Rosemary went with him. Sarah and Shirley were, with some difficulty, ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence

... croquet, if your ball was about to be sent flying, the safeguard was to draw an imaginary X with your mallet, saying, "Criss cross." It made your enemy's foot slip, and many a girl would get "mad" and not play, if you did it ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various

... Congress of Croquet Players will be held next month at Baden. They will not hold their debates in Latin. Among the points discussed will be, whether it is allowable to pop the question on the croquet ground. Old maids are quoted as thinking that it distracts the game. Younger ones would consider ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various

... a moment upon this new amusement, because it was not peculiar to Harmony Village, but appears everywhere as naturally as the game parties and croquet which have taken the place of the husking frolics and apple-bees of olden times, and it is impossible to dodge the subject if one attempts to write of boys and girls as they really ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott

... of one of the hills. The ranch-house, long, low and fanciful in design, connected by a covered portico with the kitchen, dairies and buildings, was misleading in name, for a succession of higher hills was in sight. A vined pergola, flower gardens, swings, tennis courts and croquet grounds gave the place a most ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... her kettle to make chocolate, hanging it upon a croquet hoop which she had found in the garden—Philippe's hoop. But Philippe was so powerless, he couldn't even stop his croquet hoop from being heated red-hot in the flames as a kettle-holder ... One must be sensible. He would allow it. That was the sort of device he would ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold

... be very beautiful even by people who shared his acquaintance with the Opera houses of Paris and Vienna. The foreground, to the footlights, was covered with emerald green cloth. In the middle distance symmetrical mounds of woolly green moss bounded by croquet hoops formed the base of shrubs shaped like orange-trees but studded with large pink and red roses. Gigantic pansies, considerably larger than the roses, and closely resembling the floral pen-wipers made by female parishioners for fashionable clergymen, sprang from the moss beneath ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... old men at these places, but no one else. Everyone is at the front. The houses generally have wounded soldiers in them, and these play croquet with a nurse on the lawn, or smoke in the sun. None of them want to go back to fight. They seem tired, and talk of the trenches ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan

... little more and the stream might have played, like a fire-hose, on the Toll House roof. In front the ground drops as sharply as it rises behind. There is just room for the road and a sort of promontory of croquet ground, and then you can lean over the edge and look deep below you through the wood. I said croquet ground, not green; for the surface was of brown, beaten earth. The toll-bar itself was the only other note of originality: a long beam, turning on a post, and kept slightly horizontal by ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... one's married, you know, it's not so easy, keeping up with a job. I only wish I could.... I don't like being merely a married woman. Rodney isn't merely a married man, after all.... But anyhow I'll find something to amuse my old age, even if I can't work. I'll play patience or croquet or the piano, or all three, and I'll go to theatres and picture shows and concerts and meetings in the Albert Hall. Mother doesn't do any of those things. And she is so unhappy ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... talked in a corner with Ernest Colburn, who was just out of college, and who worked in a bank. Mignonne Smith, a plump, rather pretty little body with a tremendous aureole of hair like spun golden fire, was trying to balance a croquet-ball on the end of a ruler. The ball regularly fell off. Three young men, standing in attentive attitudes, thereupon dove forward in an attempt to catch it before it should hit the floor—which it generally did with a loud thump. A collapsed chair of slender lines ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... was a croquet lawn, on which I perceived, as through a glass darkly, three figures. The mist cleared from my eyes and I recognized two of ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse

... anything that was "not quite nice," and detested a strong light, whether it were thrown upon life or landscape; in bright sunshine he always carried a white umbrella lined with green. The game he played best was croquet, and here he was really first class; but he was also skilled in every known form of Patience, and played each evening unless he happened to be ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... hands, for the benefit of her suffering parent. While Clayton was employed in supping this mutton abomination, with a loud noise peculiar to the vulgar, and Mrs. Raymond whispering inaudible words above the bowl, I was ostensibly employed in tearing a croquet to pieces with my fork, while I interrogated Dinah, in a low, even voice, between each shred, unintelligible, I knew, in the next room, through its monotony, on the success of her mission, and caught her muttered rather than murmured ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... midsummer; and the stock of the emigrants, worn out by the long journey from the States, would succumb by the score in crossing. Though much of the trail is totally unfit for cycling, there are occasional alkali flats that are smooth and hard enough to play croquet on; and this afternoon, while riding with careless ease across one of these places, I am struck with the novelty of the situation. I am in the midst of the dreariest, deadest-looking country imaginable. Whirlwinds ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... Mall, and this name comes from Pall Mall, which was the name of an old game Charles II. used to play here. It must have been rather a funny game, and no one plays it now. The players had long mallets, which were not quite like croquet mallets, but more like golf clubs, and they had a wooden ball about the size of a croquet ball, and they tried to hit the ball through a hoop high up in the air hanging from a pole. It must have been difficult and rather dangerous to have a ball as big as ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... the outside of the ditch. The most obvious place at which to begin the search was the shed where the bowls were kept. It was a tidy place as anything in Mark's establishment would be. There were two boxes of croquet things, one of them with the lid open, as if the balls and mallets and, hoops (neatly enough put away, though) had been recently used; a box of bowls, a small lawn-mower, a roller and so forth. A seat ran along the back ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne

... of the humorous, but the holy lids were down; only the mouth trembled a little. Captain Pharo and Captain Shamgar were finishing a game of croquet with the one set of those implements which the Basin possessed, dedicated for Sundays, and to the school-house yard, as being dimly understood to be a sort of Sabbatical pastime. Their voices pealed in with unconscious vigor ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... writing of took place in an almost pre-historic era in the history of British India. Some folk may remember the years before lawn-tennis was born when we all played croquet. There were seasons before that, if you will believe me, when even croquet had not been invented, and archery—which was revived in England in 1844—was as great a pest as lawn- tennis is now. People talked learnedly ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... pet hen, but she does not lay any eggs. She is a very cross hen, and she nips my fingers when I feed her. I had a little goat, but it died. My papa is going to buy me another. We have a little dog-cart, and a doll's house, and we play croquet, and swing in ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... sharply, for she was tired and anxious, 'who told you "milk" wasn't Persian for milk. Lots of English words are just the same in French—at least I know "miaw" is, and "croquet", and "fiance". Oh, pussies, do be quiet! Let's stroke them as hard as we can with both hands, ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit

... circulation and respiration, and makes the whole organism more active. The old maxim that Exercise strengthens every power must not be overlooked, as the arm of the rower or the wrist of the confirmed croquet-player will testify. But it must also be remembered, and this is a matter of prime importance, that it is only judicious exercise which gives strength; and by judicious exercise is meant that in which the parts exercised are not too steadily on ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... strong all round as she is now? Do you ever read the papers? Don't you know that we've got the Ashes and the Golf Championship, and the Wibbley-wob Championship, and the Spiropole, Spillikins, Puff-Feather, and Animal Grab Championships? Has it come to your notice that our croquet pair beat America last Thursday by eight hoops? Did you happen to hear that we won the Hop-skip-and-jump at the last Olympic Games? You've been out in the ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse

... one German came close on the heels of another, with pic-nics, boating parties, croquet parties, and open-air breakfasts; and everywhere the young queen held her court; with beauty, and grace, and ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... building," the Eubanks ladies could further inform themselves upon grave affairs of "The Home and Family,—Life, Health, Happiness, Human Love," etc., or upon more frivolous concerns, such as "Introductions and Salutations, Carriage and Horseback Riding, Croquet, Archery, and Matinee parties, and the Art of Conversation." While Asa Bundy interested himself in "History of Banking, Forms of Notes, Checks and Drafts, Interest and Usury Tables, etc.," Truman Baird, who meant some ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... anything about myself; but the young gent at the store had been strong for puttin' it in, so I'd let it slide. It's a tin affair, painted bright green, with half a dozen little brass cups sunk in it. Some rubber balls and a kind of croquet mallet ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford

... that he had sent up to Paris for a game of croquet, having heard from Prince Metternich that we all loved so much to play it, adding that he would like to see the game himself. "We are going to have a mock battle this afternoon," said he. "All these generals and officers who are here have come from everywhere to take part I think ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... you've been having such a good time you did not notice that you were getting near the edge. That's how I felt; but after a week I wanted to be working at something. I thought maybe the Lord had left my hands quite free so I could help some one else.... You have played croquet, haven't you? You know how the first person who gets out has the privilege of coming back a 'rover,' and giving a hand to any one. That's what I felt; I was a 'rover,' and you'd be surprised at all I have found to do. There are so many soldiers' wives with children who never get ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung

... to run risks and encounter accidents. Remember, there are accidents in the nursery as well as out on the water. More boys have died from hot-house culture than have died on boats large and small; and more boys have been made into strong and reliant men by boat-sailing than by lawn-croquet and dancing-school. ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London

... play Croquet through the summer day On the turf, Then at night ('tis no great boon) Let me study how the moon ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... inquired. "You know that Lucy has chased everyone out of the house. And now that Rod has finished setting out the lawn sports, what is there left to do? By the way, did Sam mend that croquet mallet, the one with ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton

... morning, but we preferred to breakfast in the south verandah. The forenoon we spent in the garden, pretending to play games that come out of boxes, such as croquet and clock golf. But most of the time we drew together and talked. The young man who knew all about South American railways took Miss M'Leod for a walk in the afternoon, and at five M'Leod thoughtfully whirled us all up to ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling

... do at the old farm that we rarely found time to play games. But we had a croquet set that Theodora, Ellen and their girl neighbor, Catherine Edwards, occasionally carried out to a little wicketed court just east of the apple house in the ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens

... that the argument against Croquet, as a game involving a bent back, and a narrowing of the chest, is ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 23, 1892 • Various

... used to groan over salt pork and dreadful dodgers, now finds the "groaning" transferred to the overloaded board. The house is now in all the charm of freshness and cleanliness, hospitably furnished, with deep piazza, a pretty croquet-lawn with fountain, and other modern attractions, the whole surrounded with what is no small gain in a muddy Maryland town—a broad Schillinger cement pavement, which, like Mr. Wopsle's acting, may be praised as "massive ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... no reason why there should not be found in every neighborhood, and especially at every school center, all kinds of plays and games, each in its own time and place and having its own patronage—marbles, tops, swings, horseshoes, "I spy," anti-over, pull-away, prisoner's base, tennis, croquet, volley ball, basketball, skating, coasting, skiing, baseball, and football. Horizontal bars, turning pole, and other apparatus should be provided in every playground. In the social centers, if the boys can be organized as ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy

... library, where he was absorbed in a folio containing the works of the sainted Father Parsons, and then the Earl showed Logan and Father Riccoboni over the house. From a window of the gallery Scremerston could be descried playing croquet with Miss Willoughby, an apparition radiant ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... We played croquet and lawn-tennis, walked in the garden, had tea, and then a large supper. After the huge pillared hall, I felt out of tune in the small cosy house, where there were no oleographs on the walls and the servants were treated considerately, and everything seemed to me young and pure, through ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff

... fashionably. Moreover, in spite of the schoolroom and nurseryful of children, marvels of needlework and knitting adorned every table, chair, and sofa, while even in the midst of the town Kencroft had its own charming garden; a lawn, once devoted to bowls and now to croquet, an old-fashioned walled kitchen garden, sloping up the hill, and a paddock sufficient to make cows and ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... good many parties, I suppose, in Holborough and the neighbourhood? I know the Holborough people are fond of giving parties, and are quite famous for Croquet." ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... represents the verandah of a fine country-house, in front of which a croquet-lawn and tennis-court are shown, also a flower-bed. The children are playing croquet with their governess. Mary Ivnovna Sarntsova, a handsome elegant woman of forty; her sister, Alexndra Ivnovna ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy

... he, the Celestial Observer, proceeds to describe our billiard matches, our tennis tournaments, our croquet parties. Maybe it never occurs to him that a large section of our race surrounded by Eternity, would devote its entire span of life to sheer killing of time. A middle-aged friend of mine, a cultured gentleman, ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome

... a shrug of the shoulders. "Isn't that Clara playing croquet with Major Bristow? I wish I didn't dislike that man so much. I hate to see ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... belongs to the Society of the Red Cross, and here sick and consumptive women come with their children for the day, and are waited on by the Red Cross sisters. We saw some of them lying about on reclining chairs, and some, less sickly, were playing croquet. The second establishment is for children who are not able to do any lessons, children who have been weeded out by the school doctor because they are backward and sickly. There are a hundred and forty children in this school, and there is a creche with ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... was not that the rarity of Christmas parties in the parish made this one a wonder, but that Boldwood should be the giver. The announcement had had an abnormal and incongruous sound, as if one should hear of croquet-playing in a cathedral aisle, or that some much-respected judge was going upon the stage. That the party was intended to be a truly jovial one there was no room for doubt. A large bough of mistletoe had been brought from the woods that day, and ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... play croquet. Una played a game which had been respected in the smartest croqueting circles of Panama; she defeated him; and while she blushed and insisted that he ought to have won, Mr. Schwirtz chuckled about his defeat and boasted of it to the group on ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... close together whilst other little girls stared and giggled, moved forward and then backward again, until suddenly Canon Lasker's Emily, who was fifteen and had such long legs that she was known as "the Giraffe," came up and said: "Isn't it hot! Do you play croquet? Please-do! I'll have—the—blue ball..." And the ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole

... keeping their dresses clean and wondering if there would be ice-cream. Within doors Maudie worried out the "Java March" on the piano, to a dozen or more patient little listeners. On the lawn several little girls played croquet. There were no boys at the party. Wilford was going to have the boys—that is, the Conservative boys the next day. Mrs. Ducker did not believe in co-education. Boys are so rough, except Wilford. He had been so ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung

... of the Luxembourg you will find a garden of roses, with a rich bronze group of Greek runners in the center, and near it, back of the long marble balustrade, a croquet ground—a favorite spot for several veteran enthusiasts who play here regularly, surrounded for hours by an interested crowd who applaud and cheer the participants in this ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith

... croquet?" asked Quimbleton, showing a neat pattern of white hoops fixed in the shaven turf. "If so, we must have a game after supper. It's very agreeable as a ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley

... relaxations. Dancing is unsuitable, swimming dangerous, athletics too tiring and exciting. Bowls, croquet, golf, walking, quoits, billiards, parlour games and quiet gymnastics without apparatus are good, if played in moderation and much more gently than normal people play them. Play is recreation only ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs

... look quite fit for a croquet party as he stands now, with a flour-scoop in one hand and a pound of tobacco in the other. But he looks like a man at work, and also like a gentleman, as he is. "Jack the Cook" ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood

... this discussion was all of a sudden puffed as a lily, because she ceased to be observed, can attend to nothing if a man is by; she can't work, she can't play, she is so eaten up with sexuality. The frivolous soul can just manage to play croquet with females; but, enter a man upon the scene, and she does even that very ill, and can hardly be got to take her turn in the only thing she has really given her mind to. We were angels compared with ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... seein' as you've put it up to me so urgent, I don't care if I do. Course I can't sign as a reg'lar, this bein' my first jab at the simple life; but if you can stand for the punk performance I'll make at progressive euchre and croquet, you can put me on the Saturday night sub ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... Circus Blocks, with which hundreds of queer, fantastic figures may be formed by any child, 1.00 Table-Croquet. This can be used on any table—making a Croquet-Board, at trifling expense 1.50 Game of Bible Characters and Events .50 Dissected Map of the United States 1.00 Boys and Girls Writing-Desk 1.00 Initial Note-Paper and Envelopes 1.00 Game ...
— The Nursery, Volume 17, No. 100, April, 1875 • Various

... without resources, and a son to bring up. The happy thought occurred to her of a summer resort in the heart of these glorious woods, within easy reach of Strasburg." There are gardens and reception-rooms in common, and here as at Grardmer croquet, music and the dance offer an extra attraction. It must be admitted that these big family hotels, in attractive country places with prices adapted to all travellers, have many advantages over our own seaside lodgings. People get much more for their money, better food, better accommodation, ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... of everything. I have read all my books, and I hate my piano. The croquet isn't up, and there is nobody to play with me, ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various

... heard of the observing of special days, Thanksgiving and Christmas particularly; of the rage for athletic equipment on every farm which had youngsters, so that the usual anaemic croquet outfit had given place to basketball practice sets, indoor-outdoor ball, volley-ball nets, and other paraphernalia. Some of it not much used now, since winter had come, but under Marty's leadership, a skating rink construction gang had thrown up a dirt embankment in a low spot ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt

... subaltern had disguised himself, and enlisted in the Pioneers in order to go up with them to the front, took a lively interest in him, and made quite a pet of him. Two other regiments were at the station at the time and, consequently, there was a good deal of gaiety in the way of lawn tennis and croquet parties, small dinners and dances and, after mess, billiards and whist. Lisle soon became an expert in the former games, but he never touched either a billiard cue or a card, though he was an interested spectator when others ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty

... of lackeys and to serve the bank Coadjutor in greed, that is the question. Shall we have music and the jocund dance, Or tolling bells? Or shall young romance roam These hills about the river, flowering now To April's tears, or shall they sit at home, Or play croquet where Thomas Rhodes may see, I ask you? If the blood of youth runs o'er And riots 'gainst this regimen of gloom, Shall we submit to have these youths and maids Branded as libertines and wantons?" Ere His words were done a ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters

... were sitting on the piazza doing nothing. Herbert had proposed croquet, but George pronounced it too warm. He also declined ball ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger

... how many, may I ask, are there who lead glorious lives? Is there any glory in dining out, in dancing, visiting, and picnicking? Where is the great glory of the billiard-table, or the croquet-lawn? No, no, my dear Dick, the only glory that falls to the share of such humble folks as we are, is to have something to do, and ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... a most genial manner made me feel quite at ease as to the abruptness of my petition. On the morrow he came over to my vicarage, and made friends with my daughters, teaching them some new manner of playing croquet [probably Castle Croquet], and writing out for them puzzles and anagrams ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

... Dr. Scroggie Park, of Kilspindie, strongly advocates the abolition of the hole altogether and the substitution of a bell, as in the old form of croquet. But, as he wisely adds, variety, not cast-iron uniformity should be our aim. The principle of self-determination should in his opinion be conceded to all properly constituted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various

... the south, overlooking the greater breadth of Long Island Sound. In its era of prosperity, the land in front of it to the water's edge, and indeed for a considerable space on all sides had been clear—laid out, no doubt, in grassy lawns, croquet grounds and tennis courts; but in the long years of its desuetude these had reverted to the primitive character of the main portion of the island, to a tangle of undergrowth and shrubbery sprinkled with scrub-oak and stunted pines. ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance

... have a game of croquet when you come back. I do like croquet, though papa laughs at me. I think I like all games. It is so nice to ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... gentlemen's coats and placing them there with gentle hands and a smiling face; occasionally she would be painted as a country milk-girl driving the cows to pasture; at other times as a young lady playing at croquet on the lawn and gambolling with children. What a contrast, what a delusion! from rags to silks and satins; from a filthy abode not fit for pigs to a palace; from turnips and diseased bacon to wine and biscuits; from beds of rotten ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... I have often watched a wary old hawk perched most impudently on the stock-yard rails, waiting until a rash chicken or duckling should, in spite of its mother's warning clucks of terror, insist on coming out from under her sheltering wings. If I took an umbrella, or a croquet mallet, or a walking stick, and went out, the bird would remain quite unmoved, even if I held my weapon pointed gun-wise towards him. But let anyone take a real gun and hold it ever so well hidden behind their back, and emerge ever so cautiously from the shelter of ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... the grass, quite silenced. The nightingale sang as if its throat would burst. It was guitars, guitars. The Salvation Army marched forward under the beeches. The people started up from their rest under the trees. The dancing-green and croquet-ground were deserted. The swings and merry-go-rounds had an hour's rest. Everybody followed to the Salvation Army's camp. The benches filled, and listeners sat on every hillock. The army had waxed strong and powerful. About many a fair cheek was tied the Salvation Army hat. ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof

... patients, whose tastes and needs are carefully considered. Amusements of various kinds, including billiards, etc., are provided within the building, which afford pleasure and profit to the patients. Out-door pastimes, such as games of ball and croquet, and other invigorating sports, are encouraged and practised. The asylum grounds embrace over four hundred acres, part of which are in a state of cultivation. The remainder diversified in character, ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... actually lighted a spark in the being of Joe Buttle. Young ladies in villages—gentry—usually visited the cottagers a bit if they were well-meaning young women—left good books and broth or jelly, pottered about and were seen at church, and playing croquet, and finally married and removed to other places, or gradually faded year by year into respectable spinsterhood. And this one comes in, and in two or three minutes shows that she knows things about the place and understands. A man might then take ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... the mountainous variety you must either pay for it or run the risk of being burned out on top. But what do castles in Spain care for the cost? We can have fireproof roofs in miniature copy of Alpine peaks or we can use them for billiard tables and croquet grounds." ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... was not calculated to supply any known want of the human race, it was palmed off on me. I became the unhappy possessor of five dressed dolls, a lady's "nubia," a baby-jumper, fourteen "tidies," a set of parlor croquet with wickets that wouldn't stand on their legs, a patent churn warranted to make a pound of fresh butter in three minutes out of a quart of chalk-and-water, a set of ladies' nightcaps, two child's aprons, a castle-in-the-air, ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

... a short, rather stout, homely-faced Englishwoman, about thirty-eight or forty, such a woman as is met daily on the croquet lawns in our suburbs, probably one of three plain sisters, and never ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... Jerry, narrowing his eyes, as if he recalled a picture he had found incredible, "she was playing croquet out in ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown

... be any more wrong to hit a ball from the end of a stick—as in billiards—than it is to hit it from a mallet in croquet; or from a stretched tendon, as in tennis; or from a bat, as in baseball—we do not feel that we have to argue the point, when we remind the reader that billiards and pool, especially in the public parlors, ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... malevolence became apparent. Boys were absolutely forced to study their lessons. The sickening fact will hardly be believed, but during school hours they were obliged to remain in their seats with the appearance at least of discipline. It is stated by good authority that the rolling of croquet balls across the floor during recitation was objected to, under the fiendish excuse of its interfering with their studies. The breaking of windows by base balls, and the beating of small scholars with bats, were declared against. At last, bloated and arrogant with success, the under-teachers threw ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte

... by his sisters' games began to bore him. His strong arms no longer wanted to play battledore and shuttlecock, they longed to throw stones. The squabbles over a petty game of croquet, which demanded neither muscle nor brain, ...
— Married • August Strindberg

... Association Football Badminton Balli-callie Bandy Baseball Basket Ball Bean Bag Best College Athletic Records Blind Man's Buff Boulder On Bull in the Ring Call Ball Cane Rush Canoe Tilting Cat, or Cattie Counting-out Rhymes Court Tennis Cricket Croquet Curling Dixie's Land Duck on the Rock Equestrian Polo Fat Feather Race Foot-and-a-half Football Garden Hockey Golf Golf-Croquet Hab-Enihan Haley Over Hand Ball Hand Polo Hand Tennis Hat Ball Hide and ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... when Robert Louis Stevenson visited the island of the lepers where Father Damien did his illustrious work he played croquet with the children, using the same mallets that they used; and when it was suggested that he put gloves upon his hands he refused to do so because, he said, "it will remind them the more of the difference between ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman

... ornaments off the drawing-room mantelpiece, he would build a fountain for the garden. He could make bookshelves out of kitchen tables, and crossbows out of crinolines. He could dam you a stream so that all the water would flow over the croquet lawn. He knew how to make red paint and oxygen gas, together with many other suchlike commodities handy to have about a house. Among other things he learned how to make fireworks, and after a few explosions of an unimportant character, came to make them very ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... point this mass is capable of many treatments. It is made into a plain loaf sprinkled with bread crumbs, dotted with butter and baked, or it is mixed with a cream sauce and treated the same way, or it is made into a plain croquet, dipped into batter and fried, or it is seasoned with a tablespoonful of molasses, vinegar and butter and made into croquets, or it is mixed with a French dressing and eaten while it is ...
— Vaughan's Vegetable Cook Book (4th edition) - How to Cook and Use Rarer Vegetables and Herbs • Anonymous

... I'm doubtful about cricket. You must have another one for cricket, and I'm afraid the warder wouldn't play. But golf, and squash rackets, and bowls, and billiards—and croquet...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne

... the door open, and sat down at the writing-table. The room was a friendly heterogeneous place, the one repository, in the well-ordered and amply-servanted house, of all its unclassified odds and ends: Effie's croquet-box and fishing rods, Owen's guns and golf-sticks and racquets, his step-mother's flower-baskets and gardening implements, even Madame de Chantelle's embroidery frame, and the back numbers of the ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... welcomed. It was a common occurrence for me to chaperon their daughters to informal dances at the different cottages along the beach, and on moonlight sailing parties on Mr. Payne's beautiful yacht, and then, during the entire summer, from the time we first got there, I have been captain of one side of a croquet team, Mr. Payne having been captain of the other. The croquet part was, of course, the result of Major Borden's patient and exacting teaching at ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... place to play. There were trees for hide-and-seek, flat spots for croquet, and little hills and hollows for everything else. The village children used this for a sort of park, and the river seemed to look on and laugh to see them so gay. It was a very sober, steady river above and below, but right here it went leaping and tumbling over some rocks, making a merry cascade,—just ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May

... he is, buddy," was the smiling answer. "The best man in the world for the job, too. Come on there now, you with the red hair. This isn't a croquet game. Lay into those cases, and get 'em off some time before New Year's. We want to have our Christmas dinner ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach

... at croquet on the lawn, Adventurously rove a league away, Or bend their steps upon the summer morn (A mile it was, I fancy), to the bay, Taking a biscuit-luncheon on the way. To wander o'er the shining, yellow sands, Quiet and lone, and watch the snowy spray; And take the curious seaweeds ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott



Words linked to "Croquet" :   croquet mallet, croquet equipment, outdoor game



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