In the brilliant preface to "Plays: Pleasant and Unpleasant," Bernard Shaw, referring to middle-class home life, speaks of "the normal English way being to sit in separate families in separate rooms in separate houses, each person silently occupied with a book, a paper, or a game of halma, cut off equally from the blessings of society and solitude."
"Socialism: Positive and Negative"
Robert Rives La Monte
He could not, without yawning piteously, spend an evening discussing the performances of the local cricket club; nor did his conduct improve when the two ladies suspended their talk and sacrificed an hour to playing four-handed halma with their husbands.
"Hyacinth 1906"
George A. Birmingham
Nor do games such as Chess, Draughts, halma and Backgammon.
"What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes"
Dorothy Canfield Fisher