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More "Chess" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him. In fact, he had very early passed the stage at which he looked upon his business as a means of support or of material comfort. Business had become for him an intellectual pursuit, a study in enterprise and increment. The field of commerce lay before him like a chess-board; the moves interested him like the manoeuvres of a game. More money was more power, a greater advantage in the game, the means of shaping men and events and markets to his own ends and uses. It was his will that set fleets afloat and determined ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... that can satisfy the soul are a person and a story; and even a story must be about a person. There are indeed very voluptuous appetites and enjoyments in mere abstractions like mathematics, logic, or chess. But these mere pleasures of the mind are like mere pleasures of the body. That is, they are mere pleasures, though they may be gigantic pleasures; they can never by a mere increase of themselves amount to happiness. A ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... drank together, talked, played chess. Garbitsch is the best chess player in the group. I am not very good. But once we had some trouble." He paused. "We had been drinking Russian liquors. They are very strong. We decided to uphold the honor ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... shelves of vellum-bound books. A bronze lamp hung from the ceiling, and its globe, covered in violet silk, cast a light like that of the early dawn in hilly regions. A faint odour of lavender filled the air. In one corner of the room there was a chess-table with its chessmen showing an interrupted game. A velvet footstool, much indented by the pressure of a firm foot, stood in front of the carved armchair in which Mrs. Rennes usually sat. Her work-basket, lined with blue satin and shining with steel fittings, stood ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... boors and burghers hale Drawn round a table, o'er a board of chess, Smoking their heavy pipes, and drinking ale, Blowing from ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... alone about the tenth row back. He rarely rose from his seat, but by voice and gesture indicated the moves on his dramatic chess-board. When it became necessary for him to go on the stage he did so with alacrity. He suggested, by marvelously simple indications and quick transitions, the significance of the scene or ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... He had liked Hannaford, and had often invited him to play chess in the evenings, hoping with unconquerable optimism to "wean him from the Casino." The quiet man, with his black patches, his calm manner and slow smile as unreadable as the eyes of the Sphinx, had seemed to George Winter a curiously tragic yet mysteriously attractive figure. "Hannaford ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... worst roar I ever heard. It would start in with a lot of foreign words an' end up with Rah! Rah Rah! The voice sounded something like Chess; but when I called him he didn't answer, an' I feared it was ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... name implies, is devoted to chess. Germans patronize it to a great extent. Politics do not enter into the precincts sacred ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... played chess with a German," he said, "and another time I went to a lecture on purifying politics, but I never struck anything so monotonous as this job I ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... ladies who were unknown to him. One of these was very old, the other an imposing matron in middle life. The three were pleasantly shaded by young oak-trees; beyond was a tall hedge of clipped yew. The older women were at chess, while Adelaide bent her meek, golden head to some of that fine needle-work in which the girl delighted. And beside them rippled a small sunlit stream, which babbled and gurgled with silver flashes. Florian hastily noted these things as he ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... enemies that give a zest to life, you know, and if I choose to match my wits against the wits of Andy P. Symes—my wits and resources—don't grudge me the pleasure, for it is in much the same spirit in which I might play the races or work out a game of chess." ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... evenings in the bleak December, Curtained warm from the snowy weather, When you and I played chess together, Checkmated by each other's ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... resumed their chess tournament. Scotty spent the time making an improvised game of Yoot, an ancient Korean game that can be played almost anywhere, under nearly any circumstances. At its simplest, the Yoot board can be scratched in the dirt with a stick, and the Yoot throwing sticks that take the place ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... of hours at a certain small eating-house, a resort of his bachelor days, where he could read the newspapers, have a well-cooked chop in quietude, and afterwards, if acquaintances were here, play a game of chess. Of course he had to shield this modest dissipation with a flat falsehood, alleging to his wife that business had kept him late. Thus on an evening of June, when the soft air and the mellow sunlight ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... just remembered the gold cloak, gold chess-board, and bright gold piece that the King had lost about a ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... point very vigorously; yet I confess that, as usual, my inveterate scepticism leaves me in some doubts. Will you assist me in resolving them?—but not to-night; let us have a little more talk about old college days,—or what say you to a game at chess?" ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... of clothes and jewelry for herself and Bessie, and that is the way they live, for they have no means, or, at least, very little, except what she manages to get from the men by philopoenas, or bets, or games at cards and chess, where they allow her to win, because she almost begs them to let her do so. She even got five pounds from my husband on a wager, which he did not ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... Murthemne. The stories of the boys in Emain were related to him; for there are three fifties of boys there,' said Fergus, 'at play. It is thus that Conchobar enjoys his sovereignty: a third of the day watching the boys; another third playing chess; [Note: Fidchill, usually so translated, but the exact nature of the game is uncertain.] another third drinking beer till sleep seizes him therefrom. Although we are in exile, there is not in Ireland a warrior who is more ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... the Frenchmen and the Englishmen who lay quite close, they had been done to death by the villainy of statecraft and statesmen, playing one race against another as we play with pawns in a game of chess. The old witchcraft was better than this new witchcraft, and not so fraudulent in its power of duping ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... ten miles distant;—a good-natured accommodating divine, who was always most obligingly ready to take a dinner and a bed at the house of any country gentleman in distress for a companion. Nothing came amiss to him,—a game at billiards, at chess, at draughts, at backgammon, at piquet, or at all-fours in a tete-a-tete,—or any game on the cards, round, square, or triangular, in a party of any number exceeding two. He would even dance among friends, rather than that ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... of June, 1402, the two armies—four hundred thousand Turks, and eight hundred thousand Mongols, if one may credit the reports—met at Ancyra. The Ottomans were defeated, and Bajazet was taken prisoner. Led into the presence of Tamerlane, he found the Mongol quietly playing chess with his son. Asia Minor submitted to the conqueror, who penetrated as far as Smyrna. An old man, he was looking towards China as another field for invasion, when he died (1405). Bajazet died soon after ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Mecca became so fond of the beverage that, disregarding its religious associations, they made of it a secular drink to be sipped publicly in kaveh kanes, the first coffee houses. Here the idle congregated to drink coffee, to play chess and other games, to discuss the news of the day, and to amuse themselves with singing, dancing, and music, contrary to the manners of the rigid Mahommedans, who were very properly scandalized by such performances. In Medina and in Cairo, too, coffee became as common a drink ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... compliment, which, as it is only feather-weight, I will allow to be thrown into the scale. But I do not agree with you. I consider war but as a game of chess, and will never hesitate to sacrifice a knight for a castle. Provided that castle is lost, Mr Pearce," continued the captain, pointing to the French vessel—"this little frigate, if necessary, shall be knight-errant enough to ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... admiring henchman who had once dealt away successive slices of his inheritance, "go get a pitcher of ice water and rustle up another siphon of seltzer and some whiskey. Likely His Nibs and I will play chess ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... friends again. They were in a tiny village, the name of which he forgot, and Colonel Talbot and Lieutenant-Colonel St. Hilaire, sitting in the main room of what was used as a tavern in times of peace, had resumed the game of chess, interrupted so often. Lieutenant-Colonel St. Hilaire was in great glee, just having captured a pawn, and Colonel Talbot was eager and sure of revenge, when Harry entered and stated that he had delivered an order to General Ewell ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... deliberately chose, after the twelve volumes, to leave Elizabeth at the height of her power, mistress of the seas, with Spain crushed at her feet. As he says himself, in the opening paragraph of his own Conclusion, "Chess-players, when they have brought their game to a point at which the result can be foreseen with certainty, regard their contest as ended, and sweep the pieces from the board." Froude had accomplished his purpose. He had rewritten the story of the Reformation. He had proved that the Church ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... beautiful city, situated on a peninsula at the head of Massachusetts Bay. It has three streets: Cornhill, Washington, and Beacon Streets. It has a Common and a Frog-Pond, and many sprightly squirrels. Its streets are straight and cross each other like lines on a chess-board. It has a State-House which is the finest edifice in the world or out of it. It has one church, the Old South, which was built, as its name indicates, before the Proclamation of Emancipation was issued. It has one bookstore, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... gilded leather which stood against the wall and were so long that the ladies of the day had the credit of hiding their gallants in them. On stools lay more books, and yet more books, with a medley of other things: a silver flagon, and some weapons, a chess-board, an ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game we call the laws of nature. My metaphor will remind some of you of the famous picture in which Retzsch has depicted Satan playing chess with man for his soul. Substitute for the mocking fiend in that picture a calm, strong angel, who is playing "for love," as we say, and would rather lose than win, and I should accept it as an ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... he and the rector started on long fishing tramps; and in the evenings, when Willie had gone to bed, and his cook was reading "The Death Beds of Eminent Saints" by the kitchen fire, Mr. Denner worked out chess problems by himself in his library, or read Cavendish and thought of next Saturday; and besides all this, he went once a week to Mercer, and sat waiting for clients in a dark back office, while he ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... that have been excavated appear to be parts of dice and chessmen. Chess was popular during the 17th century, and many dice games, including even and odd, hazard, passage, mumchance, and ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... windows, built one on each side of the front door, but even in the dim light the furniture shone with polish, and the wooden floor bore every sign of persistent and vigorous scrubbing. There was a cloth of coloured linen upon the centre table, beautifully woven in a chess-board pattern of red and blue by Ilona's deft hands. The pewter and copper cooking utensils on and about the huge earthenware stove were resplendently bright, and the carved oak dower-chest—with open lid—displayed ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... skill and taste of the latter. When such were mentioned in his hearing, he seldom failed to point out how necessary it was to arrest the object of your curiosity in its first transit, and to tell his favourite story of Snuffy Davie and Caxton's Game at Chess."Davy Wilson," he said, "commonly called Snuffy Davy, from his inveterate addiction to black rappee, was the very prince of scouts for searching blind alleys, cellars, and stalls for rare volumes. He had the scent of a slow-hound, ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... of the position in Greece, it will be well to cast a glance on the attitudes maintained by the other Balkan States and the views entertained towards them by the Entente Powers. One must know all the possible combinations on the Balkan chess-board before one can profitably study or estimate the real place of the ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... peasant were playing a game together one day (probably a game of chess, which was a favourite winter pastime with the Northern vikings). They of course had determined to play for certain stakes, and the giant, being victorious, won the peasant's only son, whom he said he would come and claim on the morrow unless the parents could hide him so ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... there were many and fair. Some were feeding in the streets their sparrow-hawks and moulting falcons; others were giving an airing to their tercels, [16] their mewed birds, and young yellow hawks; others play at dice or other game of chance, some at chess, and some at backgammon. The grooms in front of the stables are rubbing down and currying the horses. The ladies are bedecking themselves in their boudoirs. As soon as they see the knight coming, whom they recognised with his dwarf and damsel, they go out three by three to ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... friend the notaire comes to play chess with me, you should see him eye my antiques, ah, so covetously; I see him, but I never let on. Such a collection of antiques as we all are, M'sieur." Then he became serious, and lifting his cane he pointed to a gravestone at one side, "My old servant lies there, M'sieur; we are all old here ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... write, and calculate, which is more than we can say of the English. They are a grave, honest, benevolent people, but not remarkable for their industry. Their favorite amusements, when assembled together, consist in reading history or poetry, in singing, or playing at chess, in which game they take great delight, priding themselves on their skill. They are refined enough to admire poetry and music: I think I need say no more. We will now ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... may be here briefly noticed. First: a German metrical version of the Game of Chess, moralized, called Der Schachzabel. This is an extraordinary, and highly illuminated MS. upon paper; written in a sort of secretary gothic hand, in short rhyming verse, as I conceive about the year 1400, or 1450. ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... The flying train showed itself once or twice again, but smaller, and much, much farther away. It curved off into the distance. A deep cutting quickly swallowed it. It emerged for the last time, tiny as a snake upon a chess-board of far-off fields. Then it dipped into mist; the snake shot into its hole. It was gone. He sighed. It had been so lovely. Why must it vanish so entirely? Once or twice during the day it returned, touched him swiftly on the heart ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... different caste. The furniture of the two bigger squares was exactly similar. Along the two opposite walls there were narrow carpets spread on the floor, covered with cushions and low stools. Before every occupant there was an oblong on the bare floor, traced also with chalk, and divided, like a chess board, into small quadrangles which were destined for dishes and plates. Both the latter articles were made of the thick strong leaves of the butea frondosa: larger dishes of several leaves pinned together with thorns, plates and saucers of one leaf with its borders ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... Strange game of chess! a King That with her own pawns plays against a Queen, Whose play is all to find herself a King. Ay; but this fine blue-blooded Courtenay seems Too princely for a pawn. Call him a Knight, That, with an ass's, ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... finger-nails on the doorstep, was welcomed smiling once more into the parlor. Great was the rejoicing in London when Abdul Hamid's "down-and-out" performance carried his trusted friend William along. The glee changed to grief when, within a year—so quickly does the appearance of the chess-board change in "the great game"—Great Britain was once more on the doorstep, and fickle Germany was snuggling close to Young Turkey on the divan in the dimly lighted parlor. Virtuous old Britain professed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... study, and especially by that highest branch of it which, unjustly, and merely on account of its retrograde operations, has been called, as if par excellence, analysis. Yet to calculate is not in itself to analyse. A chess-player, for example, does the one without effort at the other. It follows that the game of chess, in its effects upon mental character, is greatly misunderstood. I am not now writing a treatise, but simply prefacing a somewhat peculiar narrative ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... His favorite recreations were chess, in which he excelled; music, especially that of the school of Schubert and Mozart—he entertained very decided opinions about the "music of the future"—and whist, which he rarely missed playing ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... quietly and peacefully, and the New Year came, and still the King lingered in Perth. The winter days passed pleasantly in reading, walking, and tennis-playing; the evenings in chess-playing, music, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... Chess; containing the Elementary Principles of the Game. Illustrated with Numerous Diagrams of Recent Games and Original Problems. By Charles Kenney. New York. D. Appleton & Co. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... locking both gates behind them, and walked back to the office. Once there, Hanlon said, "I see you have a chess set, sir. Do you play? I ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... foster-father, and grew apace in strength and skill. Once a Norwegian vessel arrived upon the coast of Ermonie laden with a freight of hawks and treasure (hawks at that period were often worth their weight in gold). The captain challenged anyone to a game of chess with him for a stake of twenty shillings, and Rohand and his sons, with Tristrem, went on board to play with him. Tristrem moved so skilfully that he overcame the captain, and won from him, in many games, six hawks and the sum of a hundred pounds. While the games ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... rid of the Register of Deeds by putting him out of the way; but I confess I do not see of what service he is going to be to me in my record. I have often found, however, that the Disposer of men and things understands much better than we do how to place his pawns and other pieces on the chess-board of life. A fish more or less in the ocean does not seem to amount to much. It is not extravagant to say that any one fish may be considered a supernumerary. But when Captain Coram's ship sprung a leak and the carpenter could not ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... withdrawing-room. There are said to have been persons who could attend to half a dozen different conversations going on together, and take a rational part in them all, and indulge, all the time, in a distinct consecutive train of thought beside. I dare say, Mr. Morphy, the chess-player, would find no difficulty in it. But Devereux was not by any means competent to the feat, though there was one conversation, perhaps, the thread of which he would gladly have caught up and disentangled. So the talk at top and bottom and both sides ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... outline somewhat to resemble the well-known hippocampus or sea-horse of the aquariums, whose dried remains, in a mummified state, form a standing wonder in many tiny domestic museums. But the Australian species, instead of merely mimicking the knight on a chess-board, looks rather like a hippocampus in the most advanced stage of lunacy, with its tail and fins and the appendages of its spines flattened out into long thin streaming filaments, utterly indistinguishable in hue and shape from the fucus round ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... in Doctor Keene's making himself specially entertaining in an old-family-history way, with a view to keeping his patient within doors for a safe period. He had conceived a great liking for Frowenfeld, and often, of an afternoon, would drift in to challenge him to a game of chess—a game, by the way, for which neither of them cared a farthing. The immigrant had learned its moves to gratify his father, and the doctor—the truth is, the doctor had never quite learned them; but he was one of those men who cannot easily consent to acknowledge a mere affection for ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... who was another child of her favour, being newly come, and then but Sir Charles Blount (for my Lord William, his elder brother, was then living) had the good fortune to run one day well at tilt, and the Queen was therewith so well pleased, that she sent him, in token of her favour, a Queen at chess in gold, richly enamelled, which his servants had the next day fastened unto his arm with a crimson ribband; which my Lord of Essex, as he passed through the Privy Chamber, espying with his cloak cast under his arm, the better to command it to the view, ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... of time to set our outposts. There's only three places on the coast where they can hope to sail from—here and Solitas and Alazan. They're the only points we'll have to guard. It's as easy as a chess problem—fox to play, and mate in three moves. Oh, goosey, goosey, gander, whither do you wander? By the blessing of the literary telegraph the boodle of this benighted fatherland shall be preserved to the honest political party that is seeking to ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... No. 321 of the MIRROR a brief history of the game of chess, perhaps the following anecdote will not be found unacceptable to your readers:—When the game of chess was first invented, the emperor of China sent for the inventor, and desired him to teach it ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... family friends. Here I meet with pleasant society and a hearty welcome. I am passionately fond of music, have an excellent piano, and can hear the best concerts in Europe. I go to all good plays. I am a good chess player. Lastly, I am an omnivorous reader. You will allow that my resources for passing ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... arms, and observing his commanding mien, guessed who he must be, desisted from pursuing the woman, and pardoned her. There were many foreign men there, and Sigurd made the least appearance among them. One day Sigurd came into the sitting-room, and a Northman who was splendidly clothed was playing chess with one of Thorads house-servants. The Northman called Sigurd, and asked him his advice how to play; but when Sigurd looked at the board, he saw the game was lost. The man who was playing against the Northman ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... a day from now till Monday week (Ten peerless days in all) I take my stand Vestured in some degage mode of breek (The chess-board touch, with squares that almost speak), And lightly sketch my Slice into the Sand, As based on bigger men, but much of it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... of the head, and the curved neck, remind you of a horse. It is also rather like the knight of the chess-board; or it may make you think of the dragon of the fable; but, really, the Sea-horse is like nothing on the earth, or in the waters. Nature has given it a ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... avail yourself. From the village priest I learned that, along with his fondness for hunting and drinking and the lower forms of gaming, the Count has a taste for more intellectual amusements, and chiefly for the game of chess. He is a most excellent player, and doesn't often find a worthy antagonist. His bosom friend, one Captain Ferragant, who is now living at the chateau, has no skill at chess, so the Count has been ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... onlooker, even in war, but my friend went into the arena. He was a Royal Fusilier, and the old way of life became a dream to him when he walked toward Loos, and afterward sat in shell-craters in the Somme fields, and knew that death would find him, as it did, in Flanders. I had played chess with one man whom afterward I met as a gunner officer at Heninel, near Arras, on an afternoon when a shell had killed three of his men bathing in a tank, and other shells made a mess of blood and flesh in his wagon-lines. We both wore ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... not writ large on the walls of Esens. Was it connected with Bensersiel too, or the country between? I searched the ordnance map again, standing up to get a better light and less jolting. There was the road northwards from Esens to Bensersiel, passing through dots and chess-board squares, the former meaning fen, the latter fields, so the reference said. Something else, too, immediately caught my eye, and that was a stream running to Bensersiel. I knew it at once for the muddy stream or drain we had seen at the harbour, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... of smooth, but not glossy, Bristol board or pasteboard; divide it, with your pencil and rule, into squares as large as those of the very largest chess-board: they need not be perfect squares, only as nearly so as you can quickly guess. Rest the pasteboard on something sloping as much as an ordinary desk; then, dipping your brush into the color you have mixed, and taking up as much of the liquid as ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... come into a room where we are jesting perhaps, and immediately begin to flourish about less funny perhaps but decidedly more brilliant jests, until at last we retire one by one from the conversation and watch him with savage, weary eyes over our pipes. He invariably beats me at chess, invariably. People talk about him and ask my opinion of him, and if I venture to criticise him they begin to look as though they thought I was jealous. Grossly favourable notices of his books and his pictures crop up in the most unlikely places; indeed I have almost given up ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... showed no signs of this, nor of resentment against Ulf for his rebellion, but, after his escape from the Swedes, asked the earl to go with him to his palace at Roeskilde, and on the evening of their arrival offered to play chess with him. During the game Canute made a false move so that Ulf was able to take one of his knights, and when the king refused to let this move count and wanted his man back again the earl jumped up and said ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... passed into the large meeting-room of the club fronting the street, now filled with members, many of whom had dropped in for half an hour on their way back to their offices. Of these some of the older and more sedate men, like Judge Bowman and Mr. Pancoast, were playing chess; others were seated about the small tables, reading, sipping toddies, or chatting together. A few of the younger bloods, men of forty or thereabouts, were standing by the uncurtained windows watching the belles of the town in their flounced ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... distrust of others, in all that related to themselves, is well exemplified by a casual remark that has been lately repeated to me by a respectable dignitary of the church, to whom when he was apologizing for his want of skill in the game of chess, at which they were going to play, Darwin answered, that he made it a rule, not to believe either the good or the harm that ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... him out a means of compassing his fell purpose, the which was to take vengeance of his brother on Alaeddin. So he entered a coffee-house in the market, a mighty fine place whither there resorted great plenty of folk, some to play tables, [629] some draughts [630] and other some chess and what not else. There he sat down and heard those who sat beside him talk of an old woman, an anchoress, by name Fatimeh, who still abode in her place without the city, serving [God], and came not down into the town but ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... wrestlers made very pretty play of it for some time, till James, feinting at some outlandish manoeuvre, put George on his back by a simple trip, akin to scholar's-mate at chess. ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... entrust ourselves; and it is tempting to ask, what was the secret of his success? The effort, indeed, to investigate the materials from which some rare literary flavour is extracted is seldom satisfactory. We are reminded of the automaton chess-player who excited the wonder of the last generation. The showman, like the critic, laid bare his inside, and displayed all the cunning wheels and cogs and cranks by which his motions were supposed to be regulated. Yet, after ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... nicely here," turning to Wilford, "but you must have some very handsome cigar sets, and one or two boxes of chess. Shall I see ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... the latter had long been the scene of Adam's happiest hours, for he used to sit in it when he played chess with Costa. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... chess-men, standing on the same squares of the chess-board where we left them, we say they are all in the SAME place, or unmoved, though perhaps the chessboard hath been in the mean time carried out of one room into another; ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... "She probably has a chess board always at her elbow," Sally suggested. "I can fancy the game, the white queen and her pawn against the whole black force, each man neatly tagged with his name and ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... many a Sermon that should only have been preached before a Congregation of Cartesians. On the contrary, your Men of Business usually have recourse to such Instances as are too mean and familiar. They are for drawing the Reader into a Game of Chess or Tennis, or for leading him from Shop to Shop, in the Cant of particular Trades and Employments. It is certain, there may be found an infinite Variety of very agreeable Allusions in both these kinds, but for the generality, the most entertaining ones lie in the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... make its liver grow as large as itself. I have known human beings who practised on their mental powers a precisely analogous discipline. The power of calculating in figures, of writing poetry, of chess-playing, of preaching sermons, was tremendous; but all their other faculties were like the legs and wings ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... noticeable, however, in details. Sometimes the outline of the ancient town was square or almost square, the house-blocks were of the same shape, and the plan of the town was indistinguishable from a chess-board. Or, instead of squares, oblong house-blocks formed a pattern not strictly that of a chess-board but geometrical and rectangular. Often the outline of the town was irregular and merely convenient, but the ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield
... of Durazzo, was one of your super chess-players, handling kings and queens, knights and prelates of flesh and blood in the game that he played with Destiny upon the dark board of Neapolitan politics. And he had no illusions on the score of the forfeit that would ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... an unusually quiet and domestic evening for Hale, he did not talk any more to Clarissa. It might even have been thought that he scrupulously, and of a fixed purpose, avoided her. He devoted himself to chess with Lady Geraldine; a game he played indifferently, and for which he cherished a profound aversion. But chess was one of Geraldine Challoner's strong points; and that aristocratic beauty never looked more regal than when she sat before ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... was ignorant of the Arabic language, he spoke with fluency and elegance the Persian and Turkish idioms. It was his delight to converse with the learned on topics of history and science; and the amusement of his leisure hours was the game of chess, which he improved or corrupted ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Murray are having a game of chess," she said, answering my look of astonishment. "We can be alone together half an hour. And now tell me what is the matter? There is something going wrong ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... from the rudest materials, and many were the games with which some of our comrades sought to beguile the weary hours. Capt. Frank H. Mason of the 12th Cavalry had the reputation of being our best chess player and young Adjutant Putnam was his most ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... feared tenfold more, with a slavish, superstitions terror, some scission in the continuity of man's experience, some wilful illegality of nature. He played a game of skill, depending on the rules, calculating consequence from cause; and what if nature, as the defeated tyrant overthrew the chess-board, should break the mould of their succession? The like had befallen Napoleon (so writers said) when the winter changed the time of its appearance. The like might befall Markheim: the solid walls might become transparent and reveal his doings like those of bees ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a kindly memory of one who suffered tremendously for you. Major Von Sendlingen was not an undetached person whose quarrel could be kept among private ones. On the contrary, he moved the authorities like a chess-player does the pieces, and he moved them against me. At the first, they talked of nothing less than trying me for treason, since the projected arrest of the Polish conspirator and yourself—kinswoman of the Dobronowska inscribed in the black book of the Russian and Polish police—was ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... married six years before I ever saw her. Uncle Chess says he heard it, and then forgot it, you know the way you do? I've been to Portland and Uncle Chess was bully. His old lawyer, whom he consulted at the time I left there, was dead, but we dug up the license bureau and found what we were after. She had been ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... boys know a lathe when they see it, and how, out of a block of wood, ivory, or metal, a beautifully round handle, chess-man, or even a perfect ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... the Sabbath is the chosen day for their exhibitions. It must be a very small and very poor country town in Cuba which has not its cock-pit. The inveterate gambling propensities of the people find vent also at dominoes, cards, checkers, and chess in the bar-rooms, every marble table being in requisition for the purpose of the games on Sundays. Having noticed the sparse attendance at the cathedral, we remarked to Jane that the church was quite empty, whereupon she replied with a significant ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... truth,—not for any secondary artifice in handling his ideas. Some of the sharpest men in argument are notoriously unsound in judgment. I should not trust the counsel of a smart debater, any more than that of a good chess-player. Either may of course advise wisely, but not necessarily because he wrangles ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... The drawer (it belonged to a sandalwood table, inlaid with chess-squares of pearl and malachite), being opened, proved to contain burnt almonds in an ivory box, and a silver saucer full of cubes of fig-paste, red and white. Tommy Candy seemed to find words unequal to the situation; he gave ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... his lips for a moment with a slight gurgling sound. He looked over his shoulder, and his face grew haggard with longing. His eyes sought Trent's, but Trent was smoking stolidly and looking at the cards spread out before him, as a chess-player at his pieces. ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... place in a volume which he had filled with drawings by the most famous masters of that great age. Portraiture was her chief study; and Vasari commends a picture which he saw at her father's house, of three of the sisters, and an ancient housekeeper of the family playing at chess, as a work "painted with so much skill and care, that the figures wanted only voice to appear alive." He also praises a portrait which she painted of herself, and presented to Pope Julius III., who died in 1555, which shows that she ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... that, when Johnson died, they were not on speaking terms. His explanation is that Johnson irritated him by an allusion to his being beaten by Omai, the Sandwich Islander, at chess. Mrs. Piozzi's marginal note on Omai is: "When Omai played at chess and at backgammon with Baretti, everybody admired at the savage's good breeding and at the European's ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... I deserve it? I cannot conceive how you can be amused by a wicked old hag and a girl, if possible, still more foolish. We are continually disputing about that silly wretch" (pointing to M. de Beaufort, who was playing chess); "let us take him with us and go ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... before I had left the tobacco factory to go into the General's office, and my days were spent now, absorbed and alert, beside the chair in which he sat, coolly playing his big game of chess, and controlling a railroad. He was in his day the strongest financier in the South, and he taught me my lesson. Tireless, sleepless, throbbing with a fever that was like the fever of love, I studied at his side every movement of the market, I weighed every ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... looked up into his face, and talked to him as I had not talked to him for nearly two years; I laughed gaily, as in days of old; I saw with exultation that he laughed too, and that he asked Mrs. Middleton to play at chess with my uncle, instead of him, and that he did not leave my side till the last moment that I remained in the drawing-room; and I was foolishly, wickedly happy, till I went up to my room, and laid my head ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... fifth, "Wherein discourse is held of play and many things thereto appertaining, a game of primero and of chess." ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... with healthy negroes. He married the woman, and became something of a local nabob, with the reputation of great severity as a master. One day, with his own hand, he inflicted a cruel flogging on a slave who had the name of a "bad nigger." That night, when the master was playing chess with a neighbor by candlelight on the ground floor of his dwelling, all the windows being open, the negro crept up with a loaded gun and shot ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... his game of chess coldly, methodically, and with skill; yet a game of chess is not always of interest to the spectator who does not know every move. Least of all does it interest one who feels himself but a pawn piece on the board and part of a plan in whose direction he has nothing to say. In truth, I was weary. ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... outgrown the old place in every direction, and have got a spick-and-span chess-board of a villa out on ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... certain Poets' Rooms, frescoed with illustrations of Goethe, Schiller, and Wieland; there is the room where Goethe and the Grand-Duke used to play chess together; there is the conservatory opening from it where they liked to sit and chat; everywhere in the pictures and sculptures, the engraving and intaglios, are the witnesses of the tastes they shared, the love they both had for Italy, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... head, the best volume of Labiche there is, and post it to Jules Simoneau, Monterey, Monterey Co., California: do this at once, as he is my restaurant man, a most pleasant old boy with whom I discuss the universe and play chess daily. He has been out of France for thirty-five years, and never heard of Labiche. I have eighty-three pages written of a story called A Vendetta in the West, and about sixty pages of the first draft of the Amateur Emigrant. They should each cover from 130 to 150 pages ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... flooded the other end of the parlor a minute after, and the chess board came into requisition. If Miss Morris found little skill necessary to discomfit her opponent, and wondered thereat, she could not see, as he saw, a dark face, bowed on tropic blooms, flushed with unwonted glad color, lips apart and aquiver, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... on the muddy water, and some pairs in quiet corners played chess and even cards. But there was a constant circulation among the throng. Introductions were effected in form, save that no one shook hands, at least above the water; only the detached heads bowed ceremoniously. ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... for the first time since that fearful minute when she quitted him, the husband and wife were alone. Not quite so, for he had left the door wide open—purposely, she thought. There was a full vision of Mary playing chess with her father, and of Eulalie lounging on the sofa, gazing now and then with idle curiosity ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... under the skirts of which his legs, as he slewed round, showed like the lower limb of the letter O. Through the closed skylight windows I could get a sort of watery view of the cuddy passengers—as they were then called—reading, playing at chess, playing the piano, below. There were some scores of steerage and 'tween-deck passengers, deeper yet in the bowels of the ship, but hidden out of ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... Sydney; beating the fields[13] for two nights, Saturday and Sunday. Wednesday was brought on board, tel quel, a wonderful wreck; and now, Wednesday week, am a good deal picked up, but yet not quite a Samson, being still groggy afoot and vague in the head. My chess, for instance, which is usually a pretty strong game, and defies all rivalry aboard, is vacillating, devoid of resource and observation, and hitherto not covered with customary laurels. As for work, it is impossible. We shall be in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... domestic or family ties; the same may be said of Havana, and both cities in this respect are like London. It is forbidden to discuss politics in these Cuban clubs, the hours being occupied mostly in playing cards, dominoes, chess, and checkers, for money. Gambling is as natural and national in Cuba as in China. Many Chinese are seen about the streets and stores of Matanzas, variously employed, and usually in a most forlorn and impoverished condition,—poor ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... as an uncovered check at chess! You may now mark Fox's blank countenance at finding himself thus rewarded for the good turn done to Bonaparte, and at the extraordinary conduct of his ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... upon an American citizen to found a British air fleet is extravagant—in a sense, absurd. But I was anxious to offer Mr. Oppner one more opportunity of distributing some of the vast sum which he has locked up for his own amusement—financial chess." ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... discipline and morality. His style is copious and vehement, and the strictness of his maxims appears in all his works, especially where he treats of the duties of clergymen and monks. He severely rebuked the bishop of Florence for playing a game at chess.[1] That prelate acknowledged his amusement to be a faulty sloth in a man of his character, and received the saint's remonstrance with great mildness, and submitted to his injunction by way of penance, namely: to recite three times the psalter, to wash the feet of twelve poor men, and to give ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... sweat I dug their advances. They were avoiding my position, trying to encircle me by making long semicircular marches, hoping to get between me and the other side. This was a rough maneuver, sort of like two telepaths playing chess. Both sides knew to a minute exactly what the other had in mind, where he was, and what he was going to do about his position. But they kept shifting, feinting and counter-advancing, trying to gain the advantage of number or position so that the other ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... desired. She played both lovers off, one against the other, and the result proved that her theory and practice were correct; for Sir Lexicon took advantage of an opportunity that was afforded him one afternoon while playing chess with Mrs. Grenville in the after cabin. They were quite alone, and during a pause in the game, he formally made her an offer of marriage, which, after a little skillful beating about the bush, she accepted, but on the ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... compass. She would need the extra clothing if she stayed at Ganado with the missionaries for a week on her return from the trip, and the book and chessmen would amuse them all by the way. She had heard Brownleigh say he loved to play chess. ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... its home. Through all, Messrs. Vane and Payne harangued me about the splendid bowling-alley at the Lake, the mountain-strawberries, the boats, the gravel-walks! At last it became amusing to see how skilfully they each evaded and extinguished the other; it was a game of chess, and he was to be victor who should first ask me; if one verged upon the question, the other quickly interposed some delightful circumstance about the excursion, and called upon the first to corroborate his testimony; neither, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... therefore, now that they have such an opportunity, that they will let it slip, so that perhaps we may be quartered there for the next two or three years. How it will turn out I know no more than the man in the moon: a soldier is a mere machine, and is moved by his superiors just as a chessman by a chess-player. Should there be any skrimmaging, our men are in high spirits, and will, I think, soon make the Ameers put their pipes in their pockets. Ours is the first European army that has been on the Indus since the ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... valley beneath, and in its fury snaps asunder the trunks of large trees as if they were but slender reeds, and carries the wooden houses from one side of a river to the other as easily as we could move the pieces on a chess-board. After an hour had passed, they told Rudy that it was all over, and he might go to sleep; and, fatigued with his long walk, he readily slept ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... poet's life and blood in him, I assure you. He is said to be at the feet of Rachel just now, and a man may nearly as well be with a tigress in a cage. He began with the Princess Belgiojoso—followed George Sand—Rachel finishes, is likely to 'finish' in every sense. In the intervals, he plays at chess. There's the ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... their centre, and stationing their cannon, which our gunners had begun to dismount, higher up the hill. But the remainder of their line did not change; they had squares of red and squares of black touching each other at the corners like the squares of a chess-board, in the rear of the deep road; and in attacking them we would come under their crossfire. Their artillery was in position on the brow of the hill, and in the hollow on the hill-side toward Mont-St.-Jean their cavalry ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... the afternoon Malin and his friend Grevin were playing chess before the fire in the great salon on the ground-floor. Madame Grevin and Madame Marion were sitting on a sofa and talking together at a corner of the fireplace. All the servants had gone to see the masquerade, ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... bed chamber, and to sleep outside the door in an anteroom, to do the honours of the household in his lord's absence, gracefully, like a true gentleman; to play with his lord, the ladies, or the visitors at chess or draughts in the long winter evenings; to sing, to tell romaunts or stories, to play the lute or harp; in short, to be all things to all people in peace; and in war ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... and looking towards heaven, that he is going to the left, when it is his positive intention, well-considered beforehand, to go to the right. No, France and England, Bresson and Bulwer, playing their game of chess of the Spanish marriages on the green cloth of political rascality,—never said anything comparable to the devices of these ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... wry neck falls to tuning his instrument; if that fail, he takes the height of his lord with a hawking pole. He follows the man's fortune, not the man, seeking thereby to increase his own. He pretends he is most undeservedly envied, and cries out, remembering the game, chess, that a pawn before a king is most played on. Debts he owns none but shrewd turns, and those he pays ere he be sued. He is a flattering glass to conceal age and wrinkles. He is mountain's monkey that, climbing a tree and skipping from bough to bough, gives you ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... soon afterwards, and stay till eleven or twelve. Japanese chess, story-telling, and the samisen fill up the early part of the evening, but later, an agonising performance, which they call singing, begins, which sounds like the very essence of heathenishness, and ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... sing, Sholto," said Marian. "It is an age since we last had a game of chess together. Do ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... it is often too lightly called, should rather be regarded as a phase in the world's economic history and an occurrence of moment for the future peace of all nations than the mere game on the diplomatic chess-board many writers appear to consider it. According to French critics, and they may be taken as representative of the feeling everywhere prevalent during the seven years the incident lasted, its origin was a matter of alliances and the balance of power. ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... very seldom came and made himself agreeable; playing an occasional game of chess, and more often regaling Daisy with a history of his expeditions. Other visitors Daisy had from Melbourne, now and then; but her best friend for real service, after her father and Juanita, was Dr. Sandford. He took great care of his little patient's comfort and happiness; which was ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... certain that the life and fortune of every one of us would, one day or other, depend on his winning or losing a game of chess, don't you think that we should all consider it to be a primary duty to learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces; to have a notion of a gambit, and a keen eye for all the means of giving ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... well proportioned; in temper forgiving; in self-mortification severe. His first duty in the morning was private prayer: he remained in his study till 10 o'clock, and then attended the daily prayer used in his house. Dinner being done, he sat about an hour, conversing pleasantly, or playing at chess. His study next engaged his attention, unless business or visits occurred; about five o'clock prayers followed; and after he would recreate himself at chess for about an hour, then retire to his study till eleven o'clock, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... the part of an interpreter, whether of orders or complaints, and thus brought in relations, sometimes of mirth, sometimes almost of friendship, with the officers in charge. A young lieutenant singled me out to be his adversary at chess, a game in which I was extremely proficient, and would reward me for my gambits with excellent cigars. The major of the battalion took lessons of French from me while at breakfast, and was sometimes so obliging as to have me join him at the meal. Chevenix was his name. He ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of playing a game of chess with this great man. It was during the Christmas holidays, and I had come down to Roughborough for a few days to see Alethea Pontifex (who was then living there) on business. It was very gracious of him to take notice of me, for if ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... to the haunt in question. A flight of stairs brought them to a small room in which were exposed the daily newspapers; another ascent, and they were in a room devoted to magazines, chess, and refreshments; yet another, and they reached the department of weekly publications; lastly, at the top of the house, they found a lavatory, and a chamber for the use of those who desired to write. ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... open colonnade in front of an enclosed room at the back. The illustration shows the front overlooking the court, while beyond is the Octagon Tower, the residence of the chief Sultana. In the court a portion of the marble pavement is made to represent a pachisi or chess board, and it is said the game was played with slave girls, who were used instead of the customary chessmen. The Octagon Tower is built out over the river Jumna, as will be seen ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... said to have been persons who could attend to half a dozen different conversations going on together, and take a rational part in them all, and indulge, all the time, in a distinct consecutive train of thought beside. I dare say, Mr. Morphy, the chess-player, would find no difficulty in it. But Devereux was not by any means competent to the feat, though there was one conversation, perhaps, the thread of which he would gladly have caught up and disentangled. So the talk at ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... in the parlor, which, from the way in which Ben knocked about the furniture, cushions, and books, assumed an air which somehow subdued Veronica's love for order; she played for him, or they read together, and sometimes talked; he taught her chess, and then they quarreled. One day—a long one to me,—they were so much absorbed in each other, I did not seek them ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... He feels no more hate than love. For him there is no one but himself: all other creatures are mere ciphers. The force of his will consists in the imperturbable calculations of his egotism: he is an able chess-player whose opponent is all humankind, whom he intends to checkmate. His success is due as much to the qualities he lacks as to the talents he possesses. Neither pity, nor sympathy, nor religion, nor attachment to any idea whatsoever would have power to turn him from his path. He has the same ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... da Carrara, Lord of Padua by Can Grande, at Vicenza, on the 18th September 1314. See G. Villani, 1. ix. c. 62. v. 48. One.] She predicts also the fate of Ricciardo da Camino, who is said to have been murdered at Trevigi, where the rivers (Sile and Cagnano meet) while he was engaged in playing at chess. ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... Stiff as Lot's wife, and all the good knights maimed, I trust that there is no one hurt to death, For our wild whim: and was it then for this, Was it for this we gave our palace up, Where we withdrew from summer heats and state, And had our wine and chess beneath the planes, And many a pleasant hour with her that's gone, Ere you were born to vex us? Is it kind? Speak to her I say: is this not she of whom, When first she came, all flushed you said to me ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... of playing chess and checkers, and usually acted cautiously upon the defensive until the game had reached a stage where aggressive movements were clearly justified. He was also somewhat fond of ten-pins, and occasionally ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... it's the nicest thing in the world for a girl to be such pals with her father. I wouldn't give one of the nice grey hairs on his temples for all the nobility and gentry of Europe and the millionaires of America. Then I went to get the chess-board and the dear man gave me all the pawns I wanted and proceeded to wipe the floor with me, as Harry says. We played on till it began to get dark and Susie came in with the lamp which she placed in the bracket fastened ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... cock-pits are to be found all over the island, and the Sabbath is the chosen day for their exhibitions. It must be a very small and very poor country town in Cuba which has not its cock-pit. The inveterate gambling propensities of the people find vent also at dominoes, cards, checkers, and chess in the bar-rooms, every marble table being in requisition for the purpose of the games on Sundays. Having noticed the sparse attendance at the cathedral, we remarked to Jane that the church was quite empty, whereupon she replied with a significant leer, "True, Senor, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... CHESS PATTERN.—Work a square in cross stitch, with three stitches, making three of a dark shade and six of white, working as many squares as you require, and leaving spaces equal to those occupied by cross stitch, which you must fill up with Irish ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous
... with that care and instinct which marks a good chess-player. And because he had to count upon possibilities far ahead he drew Ramon's saddle to him and cut the stirrup-leathers, cinchas, and latigos. If Ramon got one of their horses, his own jaded animal would be left. Eventually the rurales would find the saddle and Ramon's horse. And every rural ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... make over the management of this pretty little comedy to me, and rid yourself of the worry of it? I'll amuse you every morning with an account of the game of chess I should play with the Grand Almoner," ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... we never had a governess at all like you. They were old, and cross, and ugly, and didn't love to play chess, and could not sing, and I hated them! But I do like you, and I ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... were God's will," said Sir John emphatically. He looked again at the pair by the piano, and then across the long room to Colonel Sharston. Colonel Sharston was absorbed in a game of chess with Bertha Keys. He was noticing nothing but the ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... each division, making sixteen in all, each party of four dressed in garments of different colour from those worn by the others. The King and his ministers sat on the slab in the middle, and the game, which was something like chess, commenced. It must have been a glorious game: the prizes were numerous and worth playing for, and one can easily imagine the crafty old King moving his Queen so as to take the lovely slave of one of his ministers, or a handsome and fashionable young noble ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... picture of all that he went through, in the most minute details. During the day we see the pilgrims crowded together on deck, some drinking and singing, others playing dice or cards or that unfailing pastime for ship-life, chess. Talking, reading, telling their beads, writing diaries, sleeping, hunting in their clothes for vermin; so they spend their day. Some for exercise climb up the rigging, or jump, or brandish heavy weights: ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... that chess-playing private from New Zealand of whom Barry Whalen told Ian Stafford. He told it a few days after Rudyard Byng had won that fight at Hetmeyer's Kopje, which had enabled the Master Player to turn the flank of the Boers, though there was yet grim frontal ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... we returned to the khan, we found everybody still up. The room in which we were to sleep (there was only one room) was filled with a crowd of loiterers, and tobacco smoke. Some were playing games similar to our chess and backgammon, while others were looking on, and smoking the gurgling narghile, or water-pipe. The bicycles had been put away under lock and key, and the crowd gradually dispersed. We lay down in our clothes, and tried to lose consciousness; ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... considered, in his character and station, as the Seneca of the East; but his virtues, and perhaps his faults, are less known than those of the Roman, who appears to have been much more loquacious. The Persian sage was the person who imported from India the game of chess and the fables of Pilpay. Such has been the fame of his wisdom and virtues, that the Christians claim him as a believer in the gospel; and the Mahometans revere Buzurg as a premature Mussulman. D'Herbelot, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... the Nineteen Propositions would be satisfactory, and that, unless he made his peace with the English, he could not be received in Scotland. When the letters with this news reached Charles at Newcastle, he was playing a game of chess. He read them, it is said, and went on playing. He had a plan of escape on hand about the time, and the very ship was at Tynemouth. But it could not be managed. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 389-393; Burnet's Hamiltons, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... partaken of. If it was school night, the voluntary pupils went to their tasks, the masters to their posts; reading men producing their books, writing men their desks, artists painted by candle-light, and cards, chess, or draughts, combined with conversation, and an evening's glass of grog, and a cigar or pipe, served to bring round ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... fair," said a lady's voice. "I firmly believe, and I've said it all along, that you let me beat you. Why, you taught me chess yourself, and how is it possible that I could catch up to my master ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... opened at the frontispiece, lay before him on the wooden rest. He leaned back in his chair, inclining his ear like that of a confessor to the face of the medical student who was reading to him a problem from the chess page of a journal. Stephen sat down at his right and the priest at the other side of the table closed his copy of THE TABLET with an angry snap and ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... he Who knows, and knowing, never once forgets The pedigree divine of his own soul, Can conquer, shape and govern destiny And use vast space as 'twere a board for chess With stars for pawns; can change his horoscope To suit his will; turn failure to success, And from ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... fact, he had very early passed the stage at which he looked upon his business as a means of support or of material comfort. Business had become for him an intellectual pursuit, a study in enterprise and increment. The field of commerce lay before him like a chess-board; the moves interested him like the manoeuvers of a game. More money was more power, a great advantage in the game, the means of shaping men and events and markets to his own ends and uses. It was his will that set ...
— When a Man Comes to Himself • Woodrow Wilson
... done?" It was like a game of chess, both opponents well matched. Uncle Felix was too big to be caught napping by clever questions that hid traps. The children felt the danger in the air, and watched their uncle with quivering admiration. Only their uncle stood alone, whereas behind ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... at chess in prison when the news of this unjust sentence was brought to him. He calmly listened to it, with the courage native to his race. On October 22, 1268, he, with Frederick and his other companions, was conducted to the scaffold erected in the market-place, passing ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... no hurry. He had extraordinary patience, and he rather liked sitting back and watching the slow development of his plans. It was like chess; it was deliberate and inevitable. One made a move, and then sat back waiting and watching while the other side countered it, or fell, with slow agonizing, ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... other abilities: he read aloud very well; and played at chess amazingly, like a master, like a downright genius, defeating first-class players in jest. His attack was always impetuous and rigorous; his defense wise and cautious, preferably in an oblique direction; his concessions to his opponent full of refined, far-sighted calculation and murderous ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... Mrs. Argenter did not miss her; she read a great deal, and slept a great deal, and Sylvie was rarely gone long at a time. She was always ready at twilight to play backgammon, or a game of what she called "skin-deep chess," for her mother was not able to bear the exertion or excitement of chess in real, deep earnest. Sylvie brought her sewing, also,—work for Neighbor Street it was, mostly,—into the gray parlor, and "sewed for two," ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... gentlemen were present who would entertain them better than he. The audience were disappointed, but waited. The Governor, prompted by Isaacs, said, "The Honorable Mr. Delafield will address you." Delafield had forgotten the knives and forks, and was playing the Ruy Lopez opening at the chess-club. "The Rev. Mr. Auchmuty will address you." Auchmuty had promised to speak late, and was at the school-committee. "I see Dr. Stearns in the hall; perhaps he will say a word." Dr. Stearns said he had come to listen and not to speak. The Governor and Isaacs whispered. ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... to forget where Andrew Jackson was entertained before and after the Battle of New Orleans—where General Beauregard, military idol of the Creoles, resided—where Paul Morphy the "chess king" lived—where General Butler took up his quarters when, in 1862, under the guns of Farragut's fleet, the city surrendered—? Shall we fail to visit the curious old tenements and stables surrounding the barnyard ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... absent-mindedly. He was reputed to be a great reader, and could quote the poetical works of Pope by the yard. He had some skill with the pencil and the water-colour brush. He understood and could teach the theory of navigation; dabbled in chess problems; and had once constructed an astronomical timepiece. His not-too-clean hands were habitually stained with acids: for he practised etching, too, although his plates invariably went wrong. He had considerable ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... jingling rhyme. Out-door recreation is not so easily attainable, in the winter, as the time at your disposal is so short. In-door amusements must, to a great extent, take their place. The gymnasium is a good institution; chess is a game worth learning, and very fascinating to some minds; cards are good as long as gambling is avoided, and many other games readily ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... here for liberty and property! [parody of some old Speech in Parliament, let us guess,—liberty and property, my Lords!] This Gentleman—whom let me present to Monsieur Sherlock—is a Jesuit [old Pere Adam, whom I keep for playing Chess, in his old, unsheltered days]; he wears his hat: I am a poor invalid,—I ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... add that the name of our rook in chess is taken from that of this same bird; though first perverted from (Sansk.) rath, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... for such it was. And as it progressed I was more and more struck by the change in the O'Keefe. All flippancy was gone, rarely did his sense of humour reveal itself in any of his answers. He was like a cautious swordsman, fencing, guarding, studying his opponent; or rather, like a chess-player who keeps sensing some far-reaching purpose in the game: alert, contained, watchful. Always he stressed the power of our surface races, their multitudes, ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... common diversion among them; but in the opinion of Archbishop Peckham, as appears by his letters, there were other diversions of a far more reprehensible character. Actually at the small Priory of Coxford, in Norfolk, the prior and his canons were wholly given over to chess-playing. It was dreadful! In other monasteries the monks positively hunted; not only the abbots, but the common domestic monks! Nay, such things were to be found as monks keeping dogs, or even birds, in the cloister, ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... effect on Colonel Seth Pennington. It decided him to make haste slowly; so without taking the trouble to make the acquaintance of John Cardigan, he returned to Detroit, there to await the next move in this gigantic game of chess. ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... our attention to examples of this packing up of centuries into seconds which were staring us in the face in all directions. As I write these lines the newspapers are occupied by the exploits of a child of eight, who has just defeated twenty adult chess players in twenty games played simultaneously, and has been able afterwards to reconstruct all the twenty games without any apparent effort of memory. Most people, including myself, play chess (when they ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... his unwieldy carcase, which almost swamped the little conveyance. He then waited a little, and with difficulty forced the boat up against the strong flood-tide that was running, till at last he gained the chess-tree of the cutter, when he shortened in the painter (or rope that held the boat), made it fast to a ring-bolt without being perceived, and there he lay concealed, not daring to move, for fear of ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... set round about with a margin of green downs. They were large enough to have the charm of vague, indefinite extension, and yet all could be distinctly seen. Large squares of green corn that was absorbing its yellow from the sunlight; chess squares, irregularly placed, of brown furrows; others of rich blood-red trifolium; others of scarlet sainfoin and blue lucerne, gardens of scarlet poppies here and there. Not all of these, of course, at once, but they followed so quickly in the summer days that they seemed ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... a State theatre? Should gambling be legal? Should potatoes be boiled in their skins? should dynamiters? Should newspapers publish racing tips? or divorce cases? or comment? The New Journalism. What is the best ninth move in the Evans gambit? Would Morphy have been a first-class chess-player to-day? Is the Steinitz gambit sound? Do plants dream? Ought we to fill up income-tax papers accurately? Shelley and Harriet and Mary. Swift and Vanessa and Stella. Lord and Lady Byron. Did Mrs. Carlyle deserve it? The limits of biography; of photography ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... choose some for the Church. He spoke to her in a way which made her hope that he did not think her quite foolish, but she would have been glad to stay and keep Rupert in order. However, she was rejoiced to hear Elizabeth propose to him to play at chess, and she saw them ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Arthur's guests some hearkened to the teller of tales and fables. Others called for dice and tables, and played games of chance for a wager. Evil befalls to winner and loser alike from such sport as this. For the most part men played at chess or draughts. You might see them, two by two, bending over the board. When one player was beaten by his fellow, he borrowed moneys to pay his wager, giving pledges for the repayment of his debt. Dearly ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... camp as listening to the patter of the rain drops upon the roof of his canvas house, especially at night, if he is snug and warm in his blankets and the tent is waterproof. A rainy day is the kind of a day when the chess and checker enthusiasts get together. Games are rescued from the bottom of the trunk or box. Ponchos and rubber boots are now in popular favor. Thunder and lightning but add to the boys' enjoyment. What indescribable ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... very pretty woman," observed Mr. Wyllys, as he seated himself at the chess-board, opposite his daughter, after the brother and sister had left ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... OTTER; in the Third, the Collegiate Ladies, All which, he moves, afterwards, in by-walks or under-plots, as diversions to the main Design, least it grow tedious: though they are still naturally joined with it; and, somewhere or other, subservient to it. Thus, like a skilful chess player, by little and little, he draws out his men; and makes his pawns of ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... in Competition with our Apis, said the Egyptian? Let us hear, pray, what mighty Feats have been done by your boasted Brama? Why, replied the Bramin, he first taught his Votaries to write and read; and 'tis to him alone, all the World is indebted for the Invention of the noble Game of Chess. You are quite out, Sir, in your Notion, said a Chaldean, who sat within Hearing: All these invaluable Blessings were deriv'd from the Fish Oannes; and 'tis that alone to which the Tribute of divine Adoration is justly due. All the World will tell you, that 'twas ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... having assisted Antonio to depose his brother, and Prospero forgave them; and, upon their engaging to restore his dukedom, he said to the king of Naples, "I have a gift in store for you, too;" and opening a door, showed him his son Ferdinand playing at chess with Miranda. ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... its gambling details, as good a domestic game for three players as cribbage or piquet is for two. My "Court Gamester," which was in its fifth edition in 1728, after devoting its best energies to ombre, contented its readers in fewer pages with the addition only of piquet and chess. ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... himself specially entertaining in an old-family-history way, with a view to keeping his patient within doors for a safe period. He had conceived a great liking for Frowenfeld, and often, of an afternoon, would drift in to challenge him to a game of chess—a game, by the way, for which neither of them cared a farthing. The immigrant had learned its moves to gratify his father, and the doctor—the truth is, the doctor had never quite learned them; but he was one of those men who cannot easily ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... make the fierce, shrewd, artisan nature flash out into fire—not always celestial, nor always, either, infernal. So he agitated and lived—how, I know not. That he did do so, is evident from the fact that he and Katie are at this moment playing chess in the cabin, before my eyes, and making love, all the while, as if they had not been married a week.... ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... edification or instruction. Science in the hands of the clergy must needs be spiritualised and moralised; there were sermons to be found in stones, pious allegories in beast and bird; mystic meanings in the alphabet, in grammar, in the chase, in the tourney, in the game of chess. Ovid and Virgil were sanctified to religious uses. The earliest versified Bestiary, which is also a Volucrary, a Herbary, and a Lapidary, that of Philippe de Thaon (before 1135), is versified from the Latin Physiologus, itself a translation ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... thus learn is mostly from the writings of Churchmen it is doubtless a little one-sided. Thus Adam de Perseigne, an ecclesiastic, writes to the Countess du Perche to advise her how to live in a Christian manner; he counsels her to abstain from playing games of chance and chess, not to take pleasure in the indecent farces of actors, and to be moderate in dress. Then, as ever, preachers expressed their horror of the ruinous extravagance of women, their false hair, their rouge, and their dresses that were too long or too short. They also reprobated ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... continuity of man's experience, some wilful illegality of nature. He played a game of skill, depending on the rules, calculating consequence from cause; and what if nature, as the defeated tyrant overthrew the chess-board, should break the mould of their succession? The like had befallen Napoleon (so writers said) when the winter changed the time of its appearance. The like might befall Markheim: the solid walls might become transparent and reveal his doings like those of bees in a glass ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... inlaid. There were apartments in this palace sufficient to lodge two princes of the highest rank with their retinues.... The emperor has another beautiful palace, with a large court-yard paved with handsome flags in the style of a chess-board. ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... formidable to strangers. I dress at half-past one, and at two (an early hour, to which I am not perfectly reconciled) we sit down to dinner.... After dinner, and the departure of our company, one, two, or three friends, we read together some amusing book, or play at chess, or retire to our rooms, or make visits, or go to the coffee-house. Between six and seven the assemblies begin, and I am oppressed only with their number and variety. Whist, at shillings or half-crowns, is the game I generally play, and I play three rubbers with pleasure. Between ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... deductions, reasonably made, by men whose business it is to watch current events in Europe; but the idea has long been forming in the minds of political thinkers, looking not only upon the moves of the political chess-board as they superficially appear in each day's news, and are dictated largely by momentary emergencies, but seeking also to detect the purpose and temperament of the players—be they men in power or national tendencies—that the German Emperor is but continuing ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... the courtiers who crowded the Louvre, and made his way to the duke's apartments. At the door he found Chicot playing chess. Aurilly tried to pass, but Chicot, with his long legs blocked up the doorway. He was forced to touch him ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... friends," resumed Michel Ardan. "You have only to say the word. I have chess, backgammon, cards, and dominoes at your disposition. We only want ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... astonishing, my conception is clear and penetrating, if not hurried: I can make excellent impromptus at leisure, but on the instant could never say or do anything worth notice. I could hold a tolerable conversation by the post, as they say the Spaniards play at chess, and when I read that anecdote of a duke of Savoy, who turned himself round, while on a journey, to cry out "a votre gorge, marchand de Paris!" I said, "Here is a ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... the tourney had strangely contrasted with the grave and self-denying habits to which the Dominicans were devoted in their neighboring cells. The festive season was nearly at an end, for it was the 20th of February, but the evening had been more than usually gay, and had been spent in games at chess, tables, or backgammon, reading romances of chivalry, harping and singing. King James himself, brave and handsome, and in the prime of life, was the blithest of the whole joyous party. He was the most accomplished ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... the bell, he had felt so much like a modern St. George and wholly as if he were doing something rather fine and perilous, he should feel quite so much like a gauche seventeen-year-old now. He thought that he would not enjoy playing chess with Mrs. Severance. She was one of those people who smiled inoffensively at the end of a game and then said they thought it would really be a little evener if they gave you ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... notaire comes to play chess with me, you should see him eye my antiques, ah, so covetously; I see him, but I never let on. Such a collection of antiques as we all are, M'sieur." Then he became serious, and lifting his cane he pointed to a gravestone at one ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... wet evening, and when the tables were drawn the guests devoted themselves to various amusements. Lord Salisbury challenged Sir Patrick to a game at chess, Lady Salisbury and Dame Lilias wished for nothing better than to converse over old times at Middleham Castle; but the younger people began with dancing, the Duke, who was only thirty years old, leading out the elder ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stone-ladders; a practice unquestionably taken from the original, unsophisticated, domestic defences of this wary and enterprising race. Among a great many of these chevaux-de-frise, I remarked certain iron images, that resemble the kings of chess-men, and which I took, at first, to be symbols of the calculating qualities of the owners of the mansions—a species of republican heraldry—but which the brigadier told me, on inquiry, were no more than a fashion that had descended from the custom of having ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... into a room where we are jesting perhaps, and immediately begin to flourish about less funny perhaps but decidedly more brilliant jests, until at last we retire one by one from the conversation and watch him with savage, weary eyes over our pipes. He invariably beats me at chess, invariably. People talk about him and ask my opinion of him, and if I venture to criticise him they begin to look as though they thought I was jealous. Grossly favourable notices of his books and his pictures crop up in the most unlikely places; indeed I have almost given ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... tenth muse and writes impassioned verses to the Goddess of Chess whom he apostrophises as 'Sublime Caissa'! Zukertort and Steinitz are his heroes, and he is as melodious on mates as he is graceful on gambits. We are glad to say, however, that he has other subjects, and one of ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... provided for everything. If he liked, he could go to church on Friday morning; hunt otters from twelve to one on Saturday; toboggan or dig for badgers on Monday. He had the different suits necessary for those who attend a water-polo meeting, who play chess, or who go out after moths with a pot of treacle. And even, in the last resort, he ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... was unexceptionable. Why, this divan was a paradise! The civil old waiter suggested to him a game of chess: though a chess player he was not equal to this, so he declined, and, putting up his weary legs on the sofa, leisurely sipped his coffee, and turned over the pages of his Blackwood. He might have been so engaged for about an hour, ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... stretched the garden; and in its midst, mounted on a stone arch, stood a dismal sun-dial with hearts and spades painted between its figures; while the trees around it were trimmed into the shapes of confessionals and chess-pawns. To the right, a labyrinth of young trees, similarly clipped in the fashion of the time, led by a thousand devious turns to a mysterious valley, where one heard continually a low, sad murmur. This proceeded ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Ross had heard of chess, of war games played with miniature armies or ships, of games on paper which demand from the players a quick wit and a trained memory. This game, however, was all those combined, and more. As his imagination came to life the moving points ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... persons taking part in it, and all at various times joining hands. The corant was a swift lively dance, in which two persons only took part, and was not unlike our modern galop.] and no night passed but such entertainments were likewise held in the city. Billiards and chess were also played, whilst gambling became a ruling passion. The queen, Duchess of York, and Duchess of Cleveland had each her card-table, around which courtiers thronged to win and lose prodigious sums. ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... every Wednesday night. The Colonel and I are too old to alter the habit of a lifetime, and besides we both love that long evening playing chess. There's always a roaring wood fire and a steaming pot of coffee, and your mother always plays Beethoven for us just ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple
... altogether missed me, you know: so cheer up, old man. If Nell's good for a rubber, you may have the joy of my presence for an hour or two longer. You're lucky, having a wife who can play chess!" ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... very much. But "everyone is supposed to know" about literature. Then, literature is such a charming distraction! Literary taste thus serves two purposes: as a certificate of correct culture and as a private pastime. A young professor of mathematics, immense at mathematics and games, dangerous at chess, capable of Haydn on the violin, once said to me, after listening to some chat on books, "Yes, I must take up literature." As though saying: "I was rather forgetting literature. However, I've polished off all these other things. I'll have a shy ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... and added to so often that it had at last arrived at a complex ugliness which was not altogether displeasing. The materials for its structure had all been drawn at different periods from the same stone quarry, and the chequered look of new bits and old bits had a hint of the chess-board. Here Samson Mountain dwelt on his own land in the midst ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... was a lie; but I wrote across to His Majesty of what a bad impression such a rumour made; and urged him to make amends—which he did very handsomely. The Duke of Monmouth too was back again in London, and so was the Duke of York; so the chess-pieces were all again for the present on the squares on which the game had begun. It was also a little satisfaction to me to hear that Her Grace of Portsmouth had urged the Duke of York's return; ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... hundred of the Vizier's Albanian guards were lounging. In an antechamber, which opened from the gallery, a number of officers were smoking, and in the middle, on the floor, two old Turks were seriously engaged at chess. ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... I asked that question of myself! That rage has ceased; and I have but one feeling left for that credulous, fickle Paris, of which one day I was the idol, the next the byword. Well, a man sometimes plays chess more skilfully for having been long a mere bystander. He understands better how to move, and when to sacrifice the pieces. Politics, M. Vane, is the only exciting game left to me at my years. At ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... KAeFERSTEIN on one side, SPITTA on the other, thus representing the two choruses in Schiller's "Bride of Messina." The young men stand in the midst of a diagram drawn with chalk on the floor and separated, like a chess-board, into sixty-four rectangles. On the high stool in front of the office desk WALBURGA is sitting. Waiting in the background stands the house steward QUAQUARO, who might be the manager of a wandering ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... next, and many succeeding afternoons, Georgie spent by Alick's bedside, reading or chatting to him; and when he was able to use his arms, playing with him at chess, draughts, or any such game that Alick liked. That tender pity which God had put into Georgie's heart for the poor wicked boy, he kept fresh and warm from day to day; and Georgie never grudged the time or trouble which he gave to Alick,—never lost patience with him, however fretful and unreasonable ...
— The Old Castle and Other Stories • Anonymous
... wins the love of King Eochaidh. When they have been married a year, there comes Midir from the Land of Youth. By winning a game of chess from the King, he gets anything he may ask, and prays to see the Queen. When he sees her he sings a song of longing to her, and Eochaidh is troubled because it is Samhain, and he knows the great power the hosts of the air "have then over those who ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... "Chess!" called Dick, remaining on shore this time, and the yearlings with the planks hastened forward, each carrying a plank. Here and there, a lighter cadet staggered somewhat under the plank he was carrying, yet ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... picture of a round-faced, cheerful man who liked to play chess and admired Lucilla's pickled watermelon rind to the point of begging a crock of it every time ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... knights. The invention of gun-powder deprived the heavily armed "Chevalier" of his former advantage and the use of mercenaries made it impossible to conduct a battle with the delicate niceties of a chess tournament. The knight became superfluous. Soon he became a ridiculous figure, with his devotion to ideals that had no longer any practical value. It was said that the noble Don Quixote de la Mancha had been the last of the true knights. After his death, his trusted sword and his armour were ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... pictures are "The Emperor at Solferino," "Moreau and His Staff before Hohenlinden," "A Reading at Diderot's" and the "Chess Players." ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... weakness of being so excessively credulous," said a bald young man with gold spectacles, looking up from a game of chess he was playing in ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... very well, he went out, Egla, As luckily, as one would say, go Husband, He was call'd by providence: fling this short Paper Into Leandro's Cell, and waken him, He is monstrous vexed, and musty, at my Chess-play; But this shall supple him, when he has read it: Take your own Recreation for ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... solicit our friends, and the Duke came among the rest; and Lord Anglesea solicited admirably, and I did wonders. But, after all, the matter was put off till Monday, and then we are to be at it again. I dined with Lord Mountjoy, and looked over him at chess, which put me in mind of Stella and Griffyth.(2) I came home, and that dog Patrick was not within; so I fretted, and fretted, and what good did ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... it has the illusion of freewill. Doubtless the pieces in that chess game, which Eastern monarchs are said to play with human figures, come to think they move of themselves. The knight chuckles as he makes his tortuous jump at the queen, and the bishop swoops down on the castle with ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... GAME OF WEI-CHI.—At a meeting in Shanghai of the Chinese Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, M. Volpicelli read a paper on "The Game of Wei-Chi," the greatest game of the Chinese, especially with the literary class and ranked by them superior to chess. Like chess, this game is of a general military and mathematical character, but is on a much more extensive scale, the board containing 361 places and employing nearly 200 men on a side. All of the men, however, have the ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... Bornou game, played with beans and holes in the sand. Citizens and the more civilised are fond of "Bakkis," which, as its name denotes, is a corruption of the well-known Indian Pachisi. None but the travelled know chess, and the Damal (draughts) and Tavola (backgammon) of ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... asked how, why, when, or wherefore, he shuts up one eye and shakes his head. On the strength of these profound views, he in the most ingenious manner takes infinite pains to counterplot when there is no plot, and plays the deepest games of chess ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... long their game of chess, But Jehan's eyes rose oft to Mahal's brow, His ardent love he could not well repress, Nor tried—she was his ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... divans. It might have been their own luxuriously appointed rooms at Mineola. At a long table three men—all Orientals—were deeply immersed in some activity which bent their heads absorbedly over the very center of the table. It might have been a three-sided chess ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks
... however, in details. Sometimes the outline of the ancient town was square or almost square, the house-blocks were of the same shape, and the plan of the town was indistinguishable from a chess-board. Or, instead of squares, oblong house-blocks formed a pattern not strictly that of a chess-board but geometrical and rectangular. Often the outline of the town was irregular and merely convenient, but the streets still kept, so far as they could, ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield
... as Rose's which was for that reason a double pleasure. Tom was sitting near her looking supremely peaceful. On one side of the fireplace Mrs. Craigie and Mrs. MacNaughton were playing their weekly game of chess. On the other side Raeburn had his usual Sunday evening recreation, his microscope. Erica knelt beside him, her auburn head close to his white one as they arranged their specimens or consulted books of reference. The professor, who had looked in on his ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... passions. That average humanity which she favors is very borne in intellect, but very genial in heart, as a glance at its representatives in her pages will convince us. In "Adam Bede," there is Mr. Irwine, the vicar, with avowedly no qualification for his profession, placidly playing chess with his mother, stroking his dogs, and dipping into Greek tragedies; there is the excellent Martin Poyser at the Farm, good-natured and rubicund; there is his wife, somewhat too sharply voluble, but only in behalf of cleanliness and honesty and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... and independent. It is true that in January Austrian troops were no longer in Balkan territory, but that was not due to intention or desire! They had been there, they are there now, and they will be there as long as the Teutonic arms prevail. It is a game of chess: Italy knew the gambit as soon as Austria moved against Serbia. The response she must have known also, but she had not the power to move then. So she insisted pertinaciously on her right under the ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... And Peredur let loose his dog upon a hart, and the dog killed the hart in a desert place. And a short space from him he saw signs of a dwelling, and towards the dwelling he went, and he beheld a hall, and at the door of the hall he found bald swarthy youths playing at chess. And when he entered, he beheld three maidens sitting on a bench, and they were all clothed alike, as became persons of high rank. And he came, and sat by them upon the bench; and one of the maidens looked steadfastly upon Peredur, and wept. And Peredur asked her wherefore she was weeping. ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... and a peasant were playing a game together one day (probably a game of chess, which was a favourite winter pastime with the Northern vikings). They of course had determined to play for certain stakes, and the giant, being victorious, won the peasant's only son, whom he said he would come and claim on the morrow unless the ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... Fritiof's words to Bjrn are also made to convey an answer to Hilding. Kung and bonde refer to Helge and Fritiof, but they are also the chess terms for king and pawn. Note also the ingenious ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... dwelleth a foe, of mine." Hasan said to himself, "By Allah, needs must I enter yonder palace; perchance relief awaiteth me there." So coming to it and finding the gate open, he entered the vestibule, where he saw seated on a bench two girls like twin moons with a chess-cloth before them and they were at play. One of them raised her head to him and cried out for joy saying, "By Allah, here is a son of Adam, and methinks 'tis he whom Bahram the Magian brought hither this year!" So Hasan hearing her words cast himself at their ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... could come with us, Mr Knowles. We shall miss you very much. Father, when he looked at his chess-board yesterday, heaved such a tremendous sigh, and I knew that he was thinking of you, and wondering if he will ever find ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... faded stripes—Gusterson doled out to the children provender and equipment for a camping expedition to the next floor. Iago led them off in stealthy Indian file. Leaving the hall door open Gusterson got out his .38 and cleaned and loaded it, meanwhile concentrating on a chess problem with the idea of confusing a hypothetical psionic monitor. By the time he had hid the revolver again he heard the ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... long to see how ridiculous an athlete makes himself who hides behind the excuse of sickness or lack of training. They are impressed by the way in which the non-apologetic spirit is invading the less athletic games, even down to such a sedentary affair as chess. This remarkable rule, for example, was proposed in the recent chess ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... Mrs. Murray are having a game of chess," she said, answering my look of astonishment. "We can be alone together half an hour. And now tell me what is the matter? There is something going wrong ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... imprison Napoleon on a barren rock in mid-ocean. An unfaithful smith, by the slovenly shoeing of a horse, causes his lameness, and, he stumbling, the career of his world-conquering rider ends, and the destinies of empires are changed. A generous officer permits an imprisoned monarch to end his game of chess before leading him to the block; and meanwhile the usurper dies, and the prisoner reascends the throne. An unskillful workman repairs the compass, or malice or stupidity disarranges it, the ship mistakes her course, the waves swallow a Caesar, and a new chapter is written in the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... phaeton. If the Prince did not drive the Queen he rode, in which case she drove with the Duchess of Kent or the ladies. The Prince also read aloud most days to the Queen. The dinner was at eight o'clock, and always with the company. In the evening the Prince frequently played at double chess, a game of which he was very fond, and which ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... has he seen cause after cause "set down," "reserved," or "put off," because counsel are engaged elsewhere? How often has he heard the same advocate in four or five causes in the same week, in the same court, changing positions like the queen of an active chess-board; profiting his fame and pocket by means of only a hurried glance at the elaborate brief which his junior has "got up" ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... gathered round the piano. A little time afterwards Lady Montfort escaped from the Duchess, and, mingling courteously with her livelier guests, found herself close to Colonel Morley. "Will you give me my revenge at chess?" she asked, with her rare smile. The Colonel was charmed. As they sat down and ranged their ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the issues of them in governing the universe. This he seeks to show, very ingeniously, by asserting that the Supreme Being must be competent to foresee not the actual volition that will be made, but every variety that is possible; and as a consummate chess-player provides by comprehensive forecast against every possible move which his antagonist can make, and has ready a counter-move, so may we, on the supposition suggested, conceive the Supreme Being as fully competent, without the foreknowledge of the actual, by means of His foreknowledge of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... game of elegance and interest, and the being a good chess-player, carries with it a certain impression of general ability and of intellectual activity and resource. Perhaps I may allow that playing at chess adds a certain degree of interest to the perusal of the history ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... and sitting up with Tennyson conning over the Morte d'Arthur, Lord of Burleigh, and other things which helped to make up the two volumes of 1842. So I always associate that Arthur Idyll with Basanthwaite Lake, under Skiddaw. Mrs. Spedding was a sensible, motherly Lady, with whom I used to play Chess of a Night. And there was an old Friend of hers, Miss Bristowe, who always reminded me of Miss La Creevy if you know of such a ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... desire of fame. We should rather say that when nature endows a man with a remarkable gift she also implants within him the love of exercising it. Astor loved to plan a vast, far-reaching enterprise. He loved it as Morphy loves to play chess, as Napoleon loved to plan a campaign, as Raphael loved to ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... extends in a very well-fitting way over the shoulders. To a complete dress there also belong a skin neckerchief or boa, and a neck covering of multiple reindeer-skins, or of different kinds of skins sewn together in chess-board-like squares. In summer and far into the autumn the men go bareheaded, although they clip the hair on the crown of the head close to ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... Grumbach; rather he seemed to be drawn to him more closely than ever. Mad with love. That was the phrase. He conned it over and over; mad with love. That excused many things. How strangely the chess-men were moved! Had Grumbach not assisted in the abduction, her highness would in all probability have grown up as other princesses, artificial, cold, reserved, seldom touched by the fires of animated thought or action. In fact, had things been otherwise, he ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... indifference to what he saw, he was really closely observant and suggested much—and did more—to make the conditions of life on board less uncomfortable. In quiet hours he chatted deferentially with the Brigadier, played chess with the doctors, or gently "pulled the legs" of the young officers. Of stories, he had a fund. These ranged from stirring personal experiences with lions in the East African jungles to a pathetic ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... on slowly, and in the grass the crickets chirped back and forth to each other. The house was all open, and through the windows came a merry chatter, a few rattling notes of the piano, and something that sounded very much like a warm argument, for a game of chess was going on by one window. Out on the broad porch that ran all along the front of the house, and was shrouded with vines, stood a girl, leaning idly against the post and watching the shadows gather across the long walk. She was not a pretty girl, nor one that you would care to look at twice, ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... goin' on an' th' men befure th' mast at meals. Sojers mus' swear. They'se no way out iv it. It's as much th' equipment iv a sojer as catridges. In vigorous spoort it is niciss'ry but niver at checkers or chess an' sildom at dominoes. Cowboys are compelled to use it. No wan cud rope a cow or cinch a pony without swearin'. A sthrick bringin' up is th' same as havin' a wooden leg on th' plains. Profanity shud be used sparingly if at ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... oaks and elms; there were bosky shades at several points, and not far from the house there was a little rill spanned by a rustic bridge with the bark on; there were fruits and flowers, pleasant people, chess, billiards, rides, walks, and fishing. These were great attractions, but none of them, nor all of them together, would have been sufficient to hold me to the place very long. I had been invited for the trout season, but should, probably, have finished ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... of a real murder mystery, and astounded Dickens by outlining the entire plot of "Barnaby Rudge" when only a few of the first chapters had been published; if he wrote imaginatively of science, he in fact demonstrated in "Maelzel's Chess Player" that a pretended automaton was operated by a man. "Hop Frog" and "The Cask of Amontillado" are old-world stories of revenge. "The Island of the Fay" and "The Domain of Arnheim" are landscape studies, ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... Arabic language, he spoke with fluency and elegance the Persian and Turkish idioms. It was his delight to converse with the learned on topics of history and science; and the amusement of his leisure hours was the game of chess, which he improved or corrupted with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Eugene and Marlborough restored the peace and the political equilibrium of Europe. In England, the different parties in Parliament, the frequenters of the clubs and coffee-houses, were then watching every move on the political chess-board of Europe, and criticising the victories of their generals and the treaties of their ambassadors. In Germany, the nation took but a passive part. It was excluded from all real share in the great questions of the day; and, if it showed any sympathies, they were ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... men on the battle-field did not disturb his equanimity. He was unalterably fixed in his purposes, unscrupulous in the means employed, shrewd, keen and far-sighted in his measures, Europe being to him but a great chess-board, on which his hand moved kings, knights, and pawns with mechanical inflexibility. To him the end justified the means, however lacking in justice or mercy ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... Tudor times there were plenty of winter games for those who could play them, amongst which we may mention chess, cards, dice, shovel-board, ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... after dinner, when the drawing-room was filled with guests, who more or less preserved the decorum which etiquette demands in the presence of royalty, (the Duke of Sussex was of the party,) Charles Fox and Lady Anson, great-grandmother of the present Lord Lichfield, happened to be playing at chess. When the irascible dominie beheld them he pushed his way through the bystanders, swept the pieces from the board, and, with rigorous impartiality, denounced these impious desecrators of ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... with many of his relatives, called panguilans, and his children and brothers. This witness saw and knew the tumango and mandahala, the panguilan Salalila, and many others. The said king of Borney was playing chess, seated in a hall with the said panguilans. This witness bowed low and made the usual obeisance, gave him the said carpet, and sat down. One of the king's sons said to this witness, in his own language, that he talked excellently, and asked him his nationality. This witness told ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... face, happy with her daubs, messing about in the studio. Was I happier when I was like that? I would not go back to it! I would not barter my beauty for any other gift on earth. I shall fight and fight to the last ditch. I don't propose to be a pawn on the chess-board. ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... Chetah a chess board in a box ten inches square with a miniature tree six inches high on its cover. The figure of a man in chains leaning upon a spade near a wheelbarrow, stood under the tree. The expression of the face, the details of the clothing, ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... girl is never understood by foreign men—where naturalness is despised as gauche and art commands homage, where, in short, the game is everything—that most aristocratic and enthralling of all games—the game of chess, with men and women as kings, queens, pawns. . . . There you have the whole explanation of my apparent riddle. You have never met any one like ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... two solemn rows down the length of the narrow room. Three or four stout, blond girls plodded back and forth, from tables to front shop, bearing trays of cakes and steaming cups of coffee. There was a rumble and clatter of German. Every one seemed to know every one else. A game of chess was in progress at one table, and between moves each contestant would refresh himself with a long-drawn, sibilant mouthful of coffee. There was nothing about the place or its occupants to remind one of America. This dim, smoky, ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... those who did not know him. In fact, he had very early passed the stage at which he looked upon his business as a means of support or of material comfort. Business had become for him an intellectual pursuit, a study in enterprise and increment. The field of commerce lay before him like a chess-board; the moves interested him like the manoeuvres of a game. More money was more power, a greater advantage in the game, the means of shaping men and events and markets to his own ends and uses. It was his will ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... doors, and near the base of the stone-ladders; a practice unquestionably taken from the original, unsophisticated, domestic defences of this wary and enterprising race. Among a great many of these chevaux-de-frise, I remarked certain iron images, that resemble the kings of chess-men, and which I took, at first, to be symbols of the calculating qualities of the owners of the mansions—a species of republican heraldry—but which the brigadier told me, on inquiry, were no more than a fashion that ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... fondness for chess, tennis, and other games of skill, in early life. Reyes Catolicos, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... necessitated feeding him through a rubber tube for many weeks. He also attempted suicide by drowning, throwing himself face downward in a shallow swamp, whence he was rescued. This young man was an expert chess player even ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... the dead bodies of the Frenchmen and the Englishmen who lay quite close, they had been done to death by the villainy of statecraft and statesmen, playing one race against another as we play with pawns in a game of chess. The old witchcraft was better than this new witchcraft, and not so fraudulent in its power of duping ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... nearly shut her eyes at me. "You must write and tell me everything behind the creature's back." I confess I found her rather disquieting company. The evening drew on. Lamps were brought by a man with a nondescript face and very quiet footsteps. Seaton was told to bring out the chess-men. And we played a game, she and I, with her big chin thrust over the board at every move as she gloated over the pieces and occasionally croaked "Check!" after which she would sit back inscrutably staring at me. But the game was never finished. ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... the writings of Churchmen it is doubtless a little one-sided. Thus Adam de Perseigne, an ecclesiastic, writes to the Countess du Perche to advise her how to live in a Christian manner; he counsels her to abstain from playing games of chance and chess, not to take pleasure in the indecent farces of actors, and to be moderate in dress. Then, as ever, preachers expressed their horror of the ruinous extravagance of women, their false hair, their rouge, and their dresses that were too long or too short. They also reprobated ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... priest, bitterly combating the Constitutions of Clarendon. It is true that in the Prologue the poet places one or two finger-posts—small, conventional foreshadowings of coming trouble. For instance, the game of chess between King and Chancellor ends with a victory for Becket, ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... Taylor's visit has been a very pleasant one to us, and I believe to herself also. She and Mr. Weightman have had several games at chess, which generally terminated in a species of mock hostility. Mr. Weightman is better in health; but don't set your heart on him, I'm afraid he is very fickle—not to you in particular, but to half a dozen other ladies. He has just cut his inamorata at Swansea, and sent ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... stated duties, we had some time in which we could amuse ourselves as we chose, and we had many means of entertainment. We had a chessboard and men—a set of quoits, dominoes, and cards; and there was the highly intellectual game of "push pin" open to all comers. Some very skillful chess players were discovered in the company. When the weather served, we had games of ball, and other athletic games, such as foot races, jumping, boxing, wrestling, lifting heavy weights, etc. At night we would gather in congenial groups around the camp fires and talk and smoke and "swap lies," ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... and Uncle Richard were playing chess. Morten, Fanny, and Rachel were talking of to-morrow's ball, and they every now and then addressed themselves to Miss Cordsen, who was sitting by the fireside polishing ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... bereavement and her isolation. Life in Sir Thomas' home was very different from life at the manor house, both in doors and out. The old gentleman passed most of his time in his library, and Anna rarely saw him until evening, when he would sometimes instruct her in playing chess. When she went outside of the house, all seemed strange and dull and dreary, plain grass lawns all around, not a flower bed to be seen, no long garden walk, no fountain, no hills to ramble over, no purple ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... broker; But stick by me, and then he'll be A very pleasant joker! Without thee by, a lie's a lie— The truth is nought but truthful. But by me stay, and night is day— And even you are youthful When thou art near, love,— Not, love, unless,— Thick soup is clear, love, Football is chess. IRVINGS are TOOLES, love, Tadpoles are deer, Wise men are fools, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 19, 1890 • Various
... Fergus did not come, the sequence was the same, with exasperated symptoms. Night after night passed thus, and Ginevra began to fear for her father's reason. She challenged him to play backgammon with her, but he scorned the proposal. She begged him to teach her chess, but he scouted the notion of her having wit enough to learn. She offered to read to him, entreated him to let her do something with him, but he repelled her every advance with contempt and surliness, which now and then ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... Victor's arrangements, sent him word to defend Marengo to the very last extremity. He himself needed time to prepare his game on this great chess-board inclosed between the Bormida, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... satisfaction. My father (for I can scarcely say myself) was trying at this time a "straddle" in wheat between Chicago and New York; the operation so called is, as you know, one of the most tempting and least safe upon the chess-board of finance. On the Thursday, luck began to turn against my father's calculations; and by the Friday evening, I was posted on the boards as a defaulter for the second time. Here was a rude blow: my father would have taken it ill enough in any case; for ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... my money," said Tamada, and something looked out of his eyes that betrayed a purpose already gained, Rainey fancied, as a chess player might gain assurance of victory by the looking ahead to all conceivable moves against him, and providing a counter-play that would achieve the game. It was borne in upon him that Tamada had resources he could not fathom. The Oriental gave a swift smile, that held no mirth, no friendship, ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... in parliament, and a peerage. Goethe's romance has a conclusion as lame and immoral. George Sand, in Consuelo and its continuation, has sketched a truer and more dignified picture. In the progress of the story, the characters of the hero and heroine expand at a rate that shivers the porcelain chess-table of aristocratic convention: they quit the society and habits of their rank; they lose their wealth; they become the servants of great ideas, and of the most generous social ends; until, at last, the hero, who is the ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the soldier's intellectual and social needs. The piano and the phonograph, the billiard tables, draughts and chess boards, tables for games, library, and reading room keep him busy; and the concerts, stimulating lectures, moving pictures, educational classes, and debating societies provide him with ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... sofa, and on the table in front of us was a chess-board. Pauline toyed with the pawns, and I asked her if she ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Lord. Strange game of chess! a King That with her own pawns plays against a Queen, Whose play is all to find herself a King. Ay; but this fine blue-blooded Courtenay seems Too princely for a pawn. Call him a Knight, That, with an ass's, not a horse's head, Skips every way, from levity or from fear. Well, we ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... seventeen. If we continue to partake as largely of the gale of public favour as hitherto, we shall not despair of an evergreen old age. We know the value of this favour, and shall strive to maintain it accordingly. It is to us like the Queen of Chess: ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various
... might spy him out a means of compassing his fell purpose, the which was to take vengeance of his brother on Alaeddin. So he entered a coffee-house in the market, a mighty fine place whither there resorted great plenty of folk, some to play tables, [629] some draughts [630] and other some chess and what not else. There he sat down and heard those who sat beside him talk of an old woman, an anchoress, by name Fatimeh, who still abode in her place without the city, serving [God], and came not ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... stand on the squares on each division, making sixteen in all, each party of four dressed in garments of different colour from those worn by the others. The King and his ministers sat on the slab in the middle, and the game, which was something like chess, commenced. It must have been a glorious game: the prizes were numerous and worth playing for, and one can easily imagine the crafty old King moving his Queen so as to take the lovely slave of one ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... Parker, appeared very comfortable, and immensely pleased to see that I had not forgotten to bring the newspapers and pictures. I also took a chess-board, thinking to amuse him. The doctor looked dismayed when he saw me carrying a chessboard under my arm. "Madame," he said, "I think that chess is too fatiguing for an invalid; perhaps something milder would be better. I have always ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... beneath, and in its fury snaps asunder the trunks of large trees as if they were but slender reeds, and carries the wooden houses from one side of a river to the other as easily as we could move the pieces on a chess-board. After an hour had passed, they told Rudy that it was all over, and he might go to sleep; and, fatigued with his long walk, he readily slept at the ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... to sleep, and Rowland Prothero, who liked nothing but chants, and a solemn kind of music that he chose to think befitting a clergyman, was, in his turn, looking over the drawing-room scrap book. Miss Gwynne gave her papa a sly push, and whispered, that she believed Mr Rowland Prothero played chess. ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... this change in Tom's countenance it was his twin sister, sitting on Ruth's side of the table. And perhaps she understood her brother's mood. Now and then her own eyes flashed something besides curiosity along the table on her side at Ruth and Chess Copley, so evidently lost in ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... is not enough to know these things as a proposition in mathematics or as a problem in chess may be known. They must enter into the consciousness of the nation; and this they will not do if the opposite and false statement calculated to spread panic and to destroy judgment be permitted to work its full evil ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... they had traveled a good two months from their last port. They had exhausted the visireels, playing them over and over until they were intolerable. They had read and reread all the bookreels they could bear. On previous voyages they had played chess and similar games until it was completely predictable who would beat whom in ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... without variation, to yoke the most incompatible in order that the average type of humanity may be preserved? Then the one passion we esteem as sacred would be simply the deranged condition of any other beast in rutting-time. Then we, with the pigs and sparrows, would be just so many pieces on the chess-board, and our evolutions would be just a friendly trial of skill between what ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... generally considered rather a coup in war, I believe, to take the enemy's capital, isn't it? like taking a queen at chess. We keep on taking capitals, but I can't say it seems to make much difference. The Boers set no store by them apparently; neither Bloemfontein nor Pretoria have been seriously defended, and they go on fighting after their loss just as ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... from a bed of gall or bog-myrtle I shared with John Splendid after a late game of chess, and fared out on a little eminence looking over the scene. Not a soldier stirred in his plaid; the army was drugged by the heavy fir-winds from the forest behind. The light of the morning flowed up wider and whiter from the Cowal hills, ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... for a ball—this one in honor of the officers who had distinguished themselves in the Mexican War. Major Clayton, Bowdoin, the Murdochs, Stirlings, and Howards—all persons of the highest quality—inaugurated a series of chess tournaments, the several players and those who came to look on to be thereafter comforted with such toothsome solids as wild turkey, terrapin, and olio, and such delectable liquids as were stored in the ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... become acquainted with Prince Andrew Bolkonski, through whom he hoped to obtain a post on the commander in chief's staff. Berg and Boris, having rested after yesterday's march, were sitting, clean and neatly dressed, at a round table in the clean quarters allotted to them, playing chess. Berg held a smoking pipe between his knees. Boris, in the accurate way characteristic of him, was building a little pyramid of chessmen with his delicate white fingers while awaiting Berg's move, and watched his opponent's face, evidently ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... was not yet developed in France, as it was in England; all social order was unsettled and changing, and well Mazarin knew it. He knew the pieces with which he played his game of chess: the king powerless, the queen mighty, the bishops unable to take a single straightforward move, and the knights going naturally zigzag; but a host of plebeian pawns, every one fit for a possible royalty, and therefore to be used ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... the time playing at chess with Helen, and had the best of the game, but at that moment he made a false move, was check-mated, rose hastily, threw the men together on the board, and forgot to regret his shameful defeat, or to compliment Helen upon her victory. Lady Castlefort, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... shall teach us how to study, how to ride, and run, and row; How to box and play at cricket; how the heavy weight to throw; How to shoot the trembling pigeon; how the wily rat to slay; How at football and at racquets; how at whist and chess to play; How to drive the rapid tandem; how to jump, and how to walk; (For young women, trust me, Clio, can do something more than talk) How to climb the Alps in summer; how in winter time to skate; ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... sedentary games in our repertoire. Cards were unknown. The General was said to like a quiet game of whist in his own room, but if he had a pack of cards, it was probably the only one on the Farm. There was no prejudice against cards or chess or any other game so far as I know, but no one cared for any form of amusement that separated two or four from all the others. I imagine that even courting, the divine solitude of two, must have been handicapped by this persistent ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... carefully locking both gates behind them, and walked back to the office. Once there, Hanlon said, "I see you have a chess set, sir. Do you play? I ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... a seat near the fascinating Lydia. Between them there was a chess-table. Lydia laid her jewelled hand lightly on one ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... conversation had been a commonplace preamble to a serious contest, something like the first moves in a game at chess or the beginning of a race. Itzig's impatience ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... Whether with reason or not, he had the reputation for being slow-witted, in spite of the fact that he was a brilliant chess-player. ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... hither side of these rose an oblong dwelling of red brick, two stories high, and capable of accommodating thirty boys, sleeping or waking, at work or rest or play; for in bad weather we played indoors, or tried to, chess, draughts, backgammon, and the like—even blind-man's-buff (Colin Maillard)—even puss in the ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... clever cheaile, we two sit here, playing at a game of chess, over this little table, to decide which shall destroy the ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... ennui of their existence, but made no complaint of the administration of the prison in any way. To be exchanged was the burden of their wishes and prayers, and in this every one with ordinary human sympathies must feel with them. Games of chess, draughts, dominoes, and cards were their indoor amusements, and some of the more energetic kept up an attempt ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... sights which interested them—banners and lanterns, and bronze table and dinner set for one person, a cupboard with dishes, a fire pot and tools, boots and shoes of leather, wood, and straw; a kite and reel, a board on which is played a game resembling chess, white and blue vases, and a very old brass cannon used in the American attack on Korean forts in the seventies. Also there were banners hanging on the walls of the booth, and here and there stood screens, one of which was hand-embroidered by the ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... flirtatious, little gadfly of a widow; a callow, love-struck, lap-dog, young army officer, with a budding moustache and a full-blown idea of his own importance; and a dour Scotchman of middle age, with a passion for chess, a glowering scorn of frivolities, and a deep and abiding conviction that Scotland was the only country in the world for a self-respecting human being to dwell in, and that everything outside of the Established Church was foredoomed to flames and sulphur and the perpetual prodding ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... every move with that care and instinct which marks a good chess-player. And because he had to count upon possibilities far ahead he drew Ramon's saddle to him and cut the stirrup-leathers, cinchas, and latigos. If Ramon got one of their horses, his own jaded animal would be left. ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... Eden's case might have assumed a far more dangerous complexion, lent them interesting books and pictures, and often came for a few minutes to exchange some kind words with them. Mrs Lane asked them to the Lodge, read to them, sang to them, played chess and draughts with them, and often gave them drives in her carriage. These little gracious acts of simple kindness won the hearts of both the boys, ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... things," said Monty. He had his folding board out, and we did not doubt he would play chess from there to London. "Either they know exactly where that ivory is, or they haven't ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... It was like a game of chess, both opponents well matched. Uncle Felix was too big to be caught napping by clever questions that hid traps. The children felt the danger in the air, and watched their uncle with quivering admiration. ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... France, was very fond of playing at chess. One day he was having a game with one of his courtiers, and during the game made a false move, to which his adversary respectfully called his attention. The King, who did not easily suffer contradiction, did not wish to acknowledge ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... gentleman was just arrived at Ilfracombe who begged leave to wait upon me, if I would admit him; and she gave me a card with the name of Mr. Bowdler. Of course I complied, and Alexander was wild with joy at the thought of such an interview, as Mr. Bowdler is acknowledged the first chess-player in England, and was the only man, when Philidor was here, who had the honour of a drawn battle with him: a thing that Philidor has recorded by printing the whole of the game in his treatise on chess. I was not glad to bring back his ideas to that fascination, yet ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... sparkle with diamond brilliancy, but then these are usually serious, and he can afford a few miss-fires. Mr. Goschen, in the Commons, romped through his "plants" for his opponents; his interruptions were three or four deep, but he was ready for all of them. He may be likened to a professional chess player, playing a dozen opponents at once, and remembering all the moves on the separate boards. But for a humorist to miss fire—after an elaborate ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... noticeably, yet not speaking loud enough to be heard by others. "I have hastened the fitting out of the ships and delayed your coming to Court lest Philip's ferrets be set on you. The life of Kings and Queens is like to a game of chess." ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... and having a floor formed of jasper elegantly inlaid. There were apartments in this palace sufficient to lodge two princes of the highest rank with their retinues.... The emperor has another beautiful palace, with a large court-yard paved with handsome flags in the style of a chess-board. ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... late when we returned to the khan, we found everybody still up. The room in which we were to sleep (there was only one room) was filled with a crowd of loiterers, and tobacco smoke. Some were playing games similar to our chess and backgammon, while others were looking on, and smoking the gurgling narghile, or water-pipe. The bicycles had been put away under lock and key, and the crowd gradually dispersed. We lay down in our clothes, and tried to ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... playing at chess in prison when the news of this unjust sentence was brought to him. He calmly listened to it, with the courage native to his race. On October 22, 1268, he, with Frederick and his other companions, was conducted to the scaffold erected in the market-place, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... Miss Lynch, this is Eugene Dominez, known to two continents as that rare specimen, an honest collector; to me, the only man I can't beat at chess!" ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... tower or knocked down with a crash, the mud is made into a "pie", the horn is sounded. Many games are variations on pursuit and capture (or escape): tag, hide-and-seek, prisoner's base, blind {488} man's buff, football, and we might include chess and checkers here. Wrestling, boxing, snowballing are variations on attack and defense. A great many are variations on action at a distance, of which instances have already been cited from children's toys; in adult games we find here golf, croquet, bowling, quoits, billiards, shooting. Many games ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... KEGEL and KAeFERSTEIN on one side, SPITTA on the other, thus representing the two choruses in Schiller's "Bride of Messina." The young men stand in the midst of a diagram drawn with chalk on the floor and separated, like a chess-board, into sixty-four rectangles. On the high stool in front of the office desk WALBURGA is sitting. Waiting in the background stands the house steward QUAQUARO, who might be the manager of a wandering circus and, in the capacity of athlete, its main ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... in "books that are no books," Their classics—chess-boards neatly bound; Those their greatest authors who never wrote, And their deepest the ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... a master of the trade he wishes to learn. No place of education can be opened without the teacher thereof has been duly licensed. No game of chance is allowed in any shop or tavern, except in billiard-saloons and coffee-houses, where draughts and dominoes, chess and backgammon are tolerated. After a certain fixed hour of the night, no person is allowed to drive about in a Volante with the head up, unless it rains or the sitter be an invalid; the penalty is fifteen shillings. No private individual is allowed to give ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... History of Great Britain. A Game at Chess. Of Monachism and Chivalry. Dinner at Lorenzo's. Some Account of Book Collectors ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... as these prefer passing their lives in making huge efforts to become second-class chess-players, or to pocket ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... friend's mansion I began to dread The cold neat parlor and the gay glazed bed; At home I felt a more decided taste, And must have all things in my order placed. I ceased to hunt; my horses pleased me less,— My dinner more; I learned to play at chess. I took my dog and gun, but saw the brute Was disappointed that I did not shoot. My morning walks I now could bear to lose, And blessed the shower that gave me not to choose. In fact, I felt a languor stealing on; The active ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... occupation which justified his hours of leisure. The rest of that leisure was spent in happy, congenial uniformity: a morning ride, followed by some time in his comfortable study, during which he might be supposed to be writing his book; an hour or two at his club; a game or two of chess, a pastime in which he excelled; and behind all this a beautiful background, the deep and enduring affection of his wife, whose companionship, and needs, and admiration for himself filled up all the vacant spaces in his life. He would, however, ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... conversation depends on how much you can take for granted. Vulgar chess-players have to play their game out; nothing short of the brutality of an actual checkmate satisfies their dull apprehensions. But look at two masters of that noble game! White stands well enough, so far as you can see; but Red says, Mate in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... very much contribute to my ignorance; I have a slow and heavy wit, the least cloud stops its progress, so that, for example, I never propose to it any never so easy a riddle that it could find out; there is not the least idle subtlety that will not gravel me; in games, where wit is required, as chess, draughts, and the like, I understand no more than the common movements. I have a slow and perplexed apprehension, but what it once apprehends, it apprehends well, for the time it retains it. My sight is perfect, entire, and discovers at a very great distance, but is soon weary and heavy at work, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Not ostentatiously, not in a burdensome way. Only just a cycle ride here and there, or a walk, or a concert, or an hour on the church organ, when Reggie would blow and Mr. Gray, who was musical, would play as nobody in the town, not excepting the organist, could play. Or a game of chess in Mrs. Gray's drawing-room, while Elaine played or sang to them and served them ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... with a hundred thousand failures, a gray-haired, neat man, who had been everything and done nothing, and who now said evasively that he was "in the collection business." He read Dickens and played a masterful game of chess. He liked to have it thought that his past was brave with mysterious splendors. He spoke hintingly of great lawyers. But he had been near to them only as a clerk for a large law firm. He was grateful to any one for noticing him. Like ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... barrack received a miniature billiard-table, which became immensely popular. Cards, roulette, ping-pong and chess greatly assisted in passing the time. We also had quite a good camp library, the books mostly having been received from home. I often heard it remarked that life there was one long queue, and it was not far wrong. Often one passed the morning waiting one's turn ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... full of people grouped in little knots, fighting the battles of the day o'er again, playing backgammon and chess, or ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... so great a place; whose me (le moi), as M. Nicole says, had so wide a dominion; who was the centre of so many orbs. What affairs had he not to manage! what designs, what projects, what secrets! what interests to unravel, what wars to undertake, what intrigues, what noble games at chess to play and to direct! Ah! my God, grant me a little time; I want to give check to the Duke of Savoy—checkmate to the Prince of Orange. No, no, you shall not have a moment, not a single moment. Are events like ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... word. A story of Mahommedan origin, which is probably no more historical than the oath of Santa Gadea, tells of how he allowed himself to be tricked by Ibn Ammar, the favourite of Al Motamid, the king of Seville. They played chess for an extremely beautiful table and set of men, belonging to Ibn Ammar. Table and men were to go to the king if he won. If Ibn Ammar gained he was to name the stake. The latter did win and demanded that the Christian king should spare Seville. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... were forgotten soon, in the warm luxury of the drawing-room and the bright tea-table, and the comfort of sugared peaches. And then Matilda and Norton played chess all the evening, talking to Mrs. Laval at intervals. The tulip bed and the hyacinth bed were proposed, and approved; a trip to Poughkeepsie was arranged, to see Maria; and Norton told of Miss Redwood's doings in Lilac Lane. Mrs. Laval was ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... justice, Maud had meant to intrench herself in sullen silence. She saw the attack coming, and prepared to remain on the defensive. Aunt Agatha began quietly enough—to borrow a metaphor from the noble game of chess, she advanced a pawn. ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... clear and penetrating, if not hurried: I can make excellent impromptus at leisure, but on the instant could never say or do anything worth notice. I could hold a tolerable conversation by the post, as they say the Spaniards play at chess, and when I read that anecdote of a duke of Savoy, who turned himself round, while on a journey, to cry out "a votre gorge, marchand de Paris!" I said, "Here is ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... friends, and the Duke came among the rest; and Lord Anglesea solicited admirably, and I did wonders. But, after all, the matter was put off till Monday, and then we are to be at it again. I dined with Lord Mountjoy, and looked over him at chess, which put me in mind of Stella and Griffyth.(2) I came home, and that dog Patrick was not within; so I fretted, and fretted, and what ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... sold it to Uncle Billy Kerr, and used the money for a course in a school of pharmacy. Later, Charlotte, who was then Charlotte Hastings, bought it, and, after her marriage, finished paying for it out of its own products, while her husband talked politics or played chess in his drug-store. It was said that when Blake was doing either of these things he was as likely as not to keep a customer standing a half-hour before waiting on him,—and this not so much out of interest in his discussion or his game as from complete lack ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... Hilding, that good old yeoman, reached the hall of Frithiof, he found the hero sitting with Bjoern at a game of chess. Gladly was he greeted by the young man, who pointed to the High Chair, the chief seat at the board, and bade him sit and drink a horn of mead ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... times when feebleness has become so feeble as even to invent a theory, making thinness of voice, weakness of stamina, and general emasculation literary virtues; when intellect can find adequate interest only in the chess-puzzles of a Browning, and the sense of humor can find adequate sustenance only in the table-leaping antics of a Mark Twain, and the conscience can be goaded into remorse only by the sight of actual starvation, it is well to turn to ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... think it's the nicest thing in the world for a girl to be such pals with her father. I wouldn't give one of the nice grey hairs on his temples for all the nobility and gentry of Europe and the millionaires of America. Then I went to get the chess-board and the dear man gave me all the pawns I wanted and proceeded to wipe the floor with me, as Harry says. We played on till it began to get dark and Susie came in with the lamp which she placed in the ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... this tale we must go back to those stirring times in Europe when Napoleon, the great conqueror, was in the height of his career, and was disposing of countries at his will, much as a chess-player moves the king, queen, and knights upon his board. In 1807 one of his armies, led by Marshal Junot, was marching on Lisbon, with the purpose of punishing Portugal for the crime of being a friend of the ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... he said kindly, 'and I will finish that game of chess with your mother;' and Audrey, with a grateful kiss, obeyed him. But as Dr. Ross placed himself opposite his wife he seemed a little absent, as though he were listening in vain for something. For it was Audrey's habit to sing snatches ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Quoth she, "Let the Commander of the Faithful excuse me." But he was instant with her, saying, "Needs must thou tell it." And she replied, "I said, 'God confound importunity!'" "How so?" asked the Khalif, and she said, "I played one day at chess with the Commander of the Faithful [Haroun er Reshid] and he imposed on me the condition of commandment and acceptance.[FN166] He beat me and bade me put off my clothes and go round about the palace, naked; so ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... as much for one not worth a farthing. You drew this last paragraph on you by your exordium, as you call it, and conclusion. I hope, for the future, our correspondence will run a little more glibly, with dear George, and dear Harry [Conway]; not as formally as if we were playing a game at chess in Spain and Portugal; and Don Horatio was to have the honour of specifying to Don Georgio, by an epistle, whither he would move. In one point I would have our correspondence like a game at chess; it should last all our lives—but I hear you cry ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... begged Vidal to give him a word in pity of his loneliness. Joseph looked fearfully up and down the street. No Jew was in sight. He slipped hastily through the door. From that moment Uriel played his portly brother like a chess-piece, which should make complicated moves and think it made them of its own free will. Gradually, by secret conversations, daily renewed, Joseph, fired with enthusiasm and visions of the glory that would redound upon him in the community—for he was now a candidate for the dignity ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... that he had just remembered the gold cloak, gold chess-board, and bright gold piece that the King had lost about ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... and was unexceptionable. Why, this divan was a paradise! The civil old waiter suggested to him a game of chess: though a chess player he was not equal to this, so he declined, and, putting up his weary legs on the sofa, leisurely sipped his coffee, and turned over the pages of his Blackwood. He might have been so engaged ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... to Goethe, a lead pencil used by Emerson, an autograph letter of Matthew Arnold, and a chip from a tree felled by Mr. Gladstone. Its library contains a number of rare books, including a fine collection on chess, of which game several of the members are ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... looking round, as if to find some occupation for her guest, at length devised setting him to play at chess with Charles. Charles gave her an amiable look, expressing that neither liked it; but she was pretty well used to doing him good against his will, and trusted to its coming right in time. Charles was a capital chess-player, ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the heir to the throne was swarming with youth of the aristocracy. Some on the ground floor were bathing and anointing themselves, others were playing chess and checkers on the first story, others in company with dancing girls were drinking under tents on the terrace. Ramses neither drank, played, nor talked with women; he walked along one side of the terrace awaiting the Phoenician impatiently. When he saw him emerge from ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... did such a thing, or ever girl did not such a thing, that I back at any odds for crossing the Cordilleras. I would bet you something now, reader, if I thought you would deposit your stakes by return of post, (as they play at chess through the post-office,) that Kate does the trick, that she gets down to the other side; that the soldiers do not: and that the horse, if preserved at all, is preserved in a way that will leave him very little ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... room sit or stand the readers, many, for the time, at home again as they gather the local news of their own town or village. The room beyond is called the "game-room." At each little table sit the chess or draught-players, while many ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... him by the pigtail, yanked him to his knees and sliced off his head. This so-called American justice was all talk—words, words, words! From their point of view judges, jurymen and prosecutors were useless pawns in life's game of chess. Perhaps they are! ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... prospects in life; besides obtaining from me some anecdotes touching my great-uncle, the illustrious senator; or give me a slate and pencil, and teach me problems in navigation; or perhaps engage me at a game of chess. I even thought he might invite me to dinner on a sunny Sunday, and help me plentifully to the nice cabin fare, as knowing how distasteful the salt beef and pork, and hard biscuit of the forecastle must at first be to a boy like me, ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... discovery! And that reminds me of something. Is there any reason why I should not write to Mr. Larmer? He has some belongings of mine, for one thing, which I should like him to send me, including a set of chess-men." ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Bellamy continued slowly, "why does he come to us? It is not like these men to be vindictive. Diplomacy to them is nothing—a game of chess. I ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the Academy is an old friend of mine. We occasionally hobnob over the chess board and a modest glass of wine. I hear of things beyond Round Bay and Severndale; I am interested in that gathering of young men in the Academy and often ask questions. The chaplain is deeply concerned for their welfare and has told ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... euchre, or hearts, or parchesi; Susan and Philip struggled with chess; there were talks about the fire, and they all straggled upstairs at ten o'clock. Anna, appreciative and affectionate and brave, came home for almost every Saturday night, and these were special occasions. Susan and Betsey wasted their best efforts upon the dinner, and filled the vases with flowers ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... know, and if I choose to match my wits against the wits of Andy P. Symes—my wits and resources—don't grudge me the pleasure, for it is in much the same spirit in which I might play the races or work out a game of chess." ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... of France is not a region of prosperous peasant farmers, nor is it a chess-board of tiny crops, the four or five acre freeholds of small owners cut up into miniature fields. I had a long talk with a countryman, and he informed me that, as in Arthur Young's time, the land belongs to large owners, and is still, as in his ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... business and our pleasures involve the continual foresight of many contingencies. Our law, our government, and our science, continually require us to reason through a variety of complicated phenomena to the expected result. Even our games, such as chess, compel us to exercise all these faculties in a remarkable degree. Compare this with the savage languages, which contain no words for abstract conceptions; the utter want of foresight of the savage man beyond his simplest necessities; his inability to combine, or to compare, or to reason ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... into gems by the magic of its own brightness. The boughs were waving over head, covered with many-colored foliage, and the sun, glancing through, not only enriched the tints above, but checkered the mossy path along which they wandered like a chess-board of brown and gold. Some of the late autumn birds uttered their short sweet songs from the copse hard by, and the musical wind came sighing up from the valley, as if nature had furnished Eolus ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... So I mingled in the conversation, in the quiet tone of an unobserving and uninterested third party, led them into their former habits of easy chat, and, after having served awhile as the channel of communication through which they chose to address each other, set them down to a pensive game at chess, and very dutifully went to tease papa, who was still busied with his drawings. The chess-players, you must observe, were placed near the chimney, beside a little work-table, which held the board and men, the Colonel at some distance, with lights upon ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... general news. They go to the dazzling levels of society, to scandal and crime, to sports, pictures, actresses, advice to the lovelorn, highschool notes, women's pages, buyer's pages, cooking receipts, chess, whist, gardening, comic strips, thundering partisanship, not because publishers and editors are interested in everything but news, but because they have to find some way of holding on to that alleged ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... The 'Games of Hoyle', well known to the votaries of Whist, Chess, etc., are not to be superseded by the vagaries of his poetical namesake ["illustrious Synonime" in 'MS.' and 'British Bards'], whose poem comprised, as expressly stated in the advertisement, all the ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... cool of an orchard, where were already gathered his nephew Roland, with Oliver his comrade, Geoffrey of Anjou his standard bearer, and many other famous Knights. They lay about on white carpets doing what they best liked—some played games, chess or draughts, but these were mostly the old men who were glad to be still: the young ones fenced and tilted. Under a pine tree, close to a sweet-briar, a seat of massive gold was placed, and on it sat the ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... bitter," Stanton said. "All I get is exercise. All the fun has gone out of it." He sighed and grinned. There was no point in worrying the P.T. man. "I'll just have to stick to cards and chess if I want competition. Speed and strength don't help anything if I'm holding two pair against three ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... I stand and talk this nonsense now, With Guesclin getting ready to play chess, And Clisson doing something with his sword, I can't see what, talking to Guesclin though, I don't know what about, perhaps of you. But, cousin Peter, while I stroke your beard, Let me say this, I'd like to tell you now That your life hung upon a game of ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... not particularly intimate with any one of the boarders. He was acquainted with all of them. My sister played chess with him; Mr. Barnett played with him. I have seen him speak to Mr. Joseph Thomas. I do not think they were intimate. I have spent considerable time with him. I think I spent more time with him than my sister or any of the other parties in the house. I walked with him very often. I was accompanied ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... development of the position in Greece, it will be well to cast a glance on the attitudes maintained by the other Balkan States and the views entertained towards them by the Entente Powers. One must know all the possible combinations on the Balkan chess-board before one can profitably study or estimate the real place ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... these stones. Now then, boys. 'Tention! Shoulder rods! Right face! March!" And he led off at a rapid rate down by the side of the stream. "Here, lads, that's heavy," he cried at the end of a few minutes, just as the rain began to make chess pawns upon the surface of the pools. ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... the places where the assemblies meet, About the plightings and the broken vows Uttered too oft by Connaught's fair-haired dames; If thou hadst asked about the games and sports Played with the targe and shield, the sword and spear, If of backgammon or the moves of chess, Or races with the chariots and the steeds, They never would have found a champion's arm As strong to pierce a hero's flesh as thine, O rose-cloud hued Ferdiah! None to raise The red-mouthed vulture's hoarse, inviting croak Unto the many-coloured flocks, nor one Who will for Croghan combat ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... reminiscent of Fichte, which seek to define practical needs and deduce knowledge from them, to the more irresponsible utterances of those who liken science to "shorthand,"[407:8] and mathematics to a game of chess. In any case pragmatism attributes to nature a certain dependence on will, and therefore implies, even when it does not avow, that will with its peculiar principles or values cannot be reduced to the terms of nature. In short, it would be more true to say ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... guest, Arkhipov, were playing chess in his study. Vera Lvovna was minding the infant; she talked with Alena for a while; then went into the drawing-room, and rummaged among ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... Presently the red line wavered, and finally broke up, as the regiments wheeled into open column, when the whole fifteen hundred men crawled past three little scarlet spots, denoting the general and his staff. When they began to manoeuvre, each company looked like a single piece in a game at chess; and as they fired by companies, the little tiny puffs of smoke floated up like wreaths of wool, suddenly surmounting and overlaying the red lines, while the light companies breaking away into skirmishers, seemed, for all the world, like two red bricks suddenly cast ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... II, some tolerably hard nuts to crack——nuts that will require all the nut-crackers they happen to possess! pg-xiii Mental recreation is a thing that we all of us need for our mental health; and you may get much healthy enjoyment, no doubt, from Games, such as Back-gammon, Chess, and the new Game "Halma". But, after all, when you have made yourself a first-rate player at any one of these Games, you have nothing real to show for it, as a result! You enjoyed the Game, and the ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
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