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Ten-pin alleys were abundant, and some of the muscular Congressmen from the frontier would make a succession of "ten strikes" with great ease, using the heaviest balls.
The games for that purpose are of various kinds in most of which cards are relied upon to furnish the chances. Dice and billiards are also in vogue billiards to a considerable extent. The "Creoles" of Louisiana are distinguished at this game. "Ten-pins" is also a very general game, and every town has its "ten-pin alley." But "billiards" and "ten-pins" are not true "gambling games."
'Oh no, says he, with one of them smiles of his 'oh no; I just want to open our conference with a little gymnastic exhibition. And so sayin', he rolled up his shirt-sleeves he hadn't no coat on and he picked up one of them rocks with both hands, and then he gave it a swing with one hand, like you swing a ten-pin ball, and he sent that rock about thirty feet.
The man, whoever he was, had, since the wires were broken, found it necessary to test the pairs out. His first trial had been wrong. He was bending over for a second try when something struck him, bowling him over like a ten-pin. It was Barney. The man was heavier than Barney, and evidently older. He was fit, too. One thing Barney had noticed the gleam of an automatic in the man's hip-pocket.
Then Slugger Blandy came to the plate. The ball he sent out knocked Grace's leg from under him as if it were a ten-pin. Whisner popped a fly over Tay Tay Mohler's head. Now Tay Tay was fat and slow, but he was a sure catch. He got under the ball. It struck his hands and jumped back twenty feet up into the air. It was a strangely live ball.
"Is it is it the Benevolent Policemen?" "No, not the Policemen. They won't be around for a month yet." Her hand dropped to his shoulder and her eyes searched his. To another they might have seemed staring; to him they were only intent. "Poor pa; he's like a ten-pin standing at the end of the alley, isn't he? They all take a turn at him, don't they?" "I'm afraid that's about it, Jennie."
Dundas pressed forward, and they rode together along the winding way past the ten-pin alley, its long low roof half hidden in the encroaching undergrowth springing up apace beneath the great trees; past the stables; past a line of summer cottages, strangely staring of aspect out of the yawning doors and windows, giving, instead of an impression of vacancy, a sense of covert watching, of secret occupancy.
Here and there a flight of broad stone cellar-steps appears, and a painted lamp directs you to the Bowling Saloon, or Ten-Pin alley; Ten-Pins being a game of mingled chance and skill, invented when the legislature passed an act forbidding Nine-Pins. But how quiet the streets are! Are there no itinerant bands; no wind or stringed instruments? No, not one.
Is she ready to cut off remorselessly the man or the woman, the youth or the maid who dances, however properly and modestly? Is she ready to expel or suspend every minister who shall roll a ten-pin ball, or while away an hour with chess or backgammon? Is she ready to lay violent hands upon every member who fingers a card or handles a cue, or strikes a croquet ball?
There was a spacious hotel there; there was a village of cottages of varying sizes; there were buildings for servants and managers; there was a ten-pin alley and a quiet ground; there were arbors and swings; and a square hole in a stone slab, through which a little pool of greenish water could be seen, with a tin cup, somewhat rusty, lying by it.
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