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He could write Latin verses a great deal faster than I could ever write English prose, and nothing seemed too great for him. We thought that he would go to Oxford and astonish every one, and write in the style of Buchanan; but he fell all abroad very lamentably; and now, when I met him again, was come down to push-pin and shovel-board, with a wager of spirits pending.
When the Master of Ravenswood would no longer fence or play at shovel-board; when he himself had polished to the extremity the coat of his palfrey with brush, curry comb, and hair-cloth; when he had seen him eat his provender, and gently lie down in his stall, he could hardly help envying the animal's apparent acquiescence in a life so monotonous.
John Ridd, you ought to have studied medicine, with your healing powers. Half my virtue lies in touch. A clean and wholesome body, sir; I have taught you the Latin grammar. I leave you in excellent hands, my dear, and they wait for me at shovel-board. Bread and water poultice cold, to be renewed, tribus horis.
Of these, at one end of the longer and lower table beneath the dais, some squires of good dress and mien were engaged at chess or dice; others were conferring in the gloomy embrasures of the casements; some walking to and fro, others gathered round the shovel-board.
Hunting, hawking, coursing, fishing, and the rest beguiled the leisure hours of those who had any, and the harvest festivals would have played their part. There were great fairs and open markets held at certain seasons of spring and summer. Within doors, cards and shovel-board would seem to have been the only kind of amusement that were not directly associated with social ceremonies.
'I should like to have sketched her, said Mr Holdsworth, as he turned away. He went back to his chair, and rested in silence for a minute or two. Then he was up again. 'I would give a good deal for a book, he said. 'It would keep me quiet. He began to look round; there were a few volumes at one end of the shovel-board.
"Can ye not stir his mind to any pastimes?" said Tressilian. "He is clean and quite off his sports," said Will Badger; "hath neither touched backgammon or shovel-board, nor looked on the big book of harrowtry wi' Master Mumblazen.
For her father's comfort, noting the sad wistful eyes that watched her coming in and going out, she had resigned herself to spend long melancholy hours within doors, reading aloud till Sir John fell asleep, playing backgammon a game she detested worse even than shove-halfpenny, which latter primitive game they played sometimes on the shovel-board in the hall.
To make this dear old man happy, to be his companion and friend, to share in his rides and rambles, and of an evening to play the games he loved on the old shovel-board in the hall, or an old-fashioned game at cards, or backgammon beside the fire in the panelled parlour, reconciled her to the melancholy of an existence from which hope had vanished like a light extinguished.
The short-voyage passenger gets his chief physical exercise out of "horse-billiards" shovel-board. It is a good game. We play it in this ship. A quartermaster chalks off a diagram like this-on the deck. The player uses a cue that is like a broom-handle with a quarter-moon of wood fastened to the end of it.
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