Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 October 1891 — BATTLEDOOR REVIVED. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

BATTLEDOOR REVIVED.

A Game of Our Grandmothers Again in Vogue. That gay little game called battledoor and shuttlecock, which was so popular in our grandmothers’ day, bids fair to become popular again with the invention of badminton, which it so closely resembles. It requires no especial muscular development, says the New York Recorder, only ability and as much grace as may be convenient. There are old-fashioned folks still who think that a sedate game of croquet, or even the terribly earnest tennis, affords no such real sport as did this simple little game of the past. People make work of their sports to-day, these old folks say, because it is a workaday age, and they must cultivate their brains or muscles, or both, even in popular pastimes. Battledoor and shuttlecock insures one of the most beneficial means of exercise, the continual upward movement of the arms—the reaching—which is the best of tennis, from the athletic point of view. It isn’t an expensive game, either, for the implements cost almost nothing. A battledoor and shuttlecock club may be organized by any set of young people who have a moderate spread of greensward available. A little garden hat, with a brim wide enough to keep the sun from the eyes, pretty bodices on the peasant style, or with Swiss .belts, the under blouse sufficiently easy for free arm movement; skirts short, full and

piquant (no demi-trains), and stout little boots are the costuming essentials. Striped outing flannel shirt sleeves for men, with tennis caps and knee breeches. The game, to be interesting, must be conducted under the general rules which prevail in ball games. Much may be made of it by those who are skilled in ball-playing, though it calls rather for grace than for skill or technical knowledge. Battledoor and shuttlecock is a very old game. We hear of it, along with other light rollicking sports in which women participated, among the court pastimes of Louis XIY. The court of Henry Quatre was famous for all sorts of romping games. Henry of Navarre was too much of a warrior not to be fond of athletic sports, and many of those indulged in by the Queen and her ladles, as well as by the King and his followers, were almost boyish in character. There are old pictures which give the shuttlecock quite the form it has to-day, though the battledoor has changed.

AS OUR GRANDMOTHERS FLAYED.