"Chess" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said that Palamedes was the inventor of weights and measures, and of the games of chess and backgammon, and that it was he who first placed sentinels round a camp and gave ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... playing Life another way. It would be like chess, where you can see the opponent's every move. But in all human history there has never been a social analogue for chess. That's why Paul Wendell and his group had to be stopped—for a ...
— Suite Mentale • Gordon Randall Garrett
... of chess; or pictures in Bond Street, or a long way home to take the air with Bonamy on his arm, meditatively marching, head thrown back, the world a spectacle, the early moon above the steeples coming in for praise, the sea-gulls flying ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... is characteristic of European and Asiatic relations today. For the peace-loving Nations, and there are many of them, find that their very identity depends on their moving and moving again on the chess board of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... like a gate, and is made of several slim branches placed at regular distances like the steps of a ladder lying horizontally. The form turns, like the echalier, on a pivot. These "hedges" and echaliers give the region the appearance of a huge chess-board, each field forming a square, perfectly isolated from the rest, closed like a fortress and protected by ramparts. The gate, which is very easy to defend, is a dangerous spot for assailants. The Breton peasant thinks ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... 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 |
