"Chess" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... music, politics did not exhaust the interests of this strong and eager mind. He was a good chess-player, and followed with lively curiosity the new developments in mechanics and aviation. Very fond of dogs, between him and our little fox-terrier there was a tie of deep affection. As indicative of ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... the tavern, just back, as they said, from sea, and come with sunburned skins from a very long voyage to the South; and one of them had a board and chessmen under his arm, and they were complaining that they could find no one who knew how to play chess. This was the year that the Tournament was in England. And a little dark man at a table in a corner of the room, drinking sugar and water, asked them why they wished to play chess; and they said they would play any man for a pound. They opened their box of chessmen then, a ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... the time when she knew he would be absorbed in a game of chess with John Stone, and she would be safe from interruption for several hours if she wished, she went to Major Warfield's little armory in the closet adjoining his room, opened his pistol case and took from it a pair of revolvers, closed and locked ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... being hatched Pauline and Harry were playing chess in the library. As she checkmated him for the third time he arose ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... fateful evening doth descend upon us, And brings on their long night! Their evil stars Deliver them unarmed into our hands. And from their drunken dream of golden fortunes 20 The dagger at their heart shall rouse them. Well, The Duke was ever a great calculator; His fellow-men were figures on his chess-board, To move and station, as his game required. Other men's honour, dignity, good name, 25 Did he shift like pawns, and made no conscience of it: Still calculating, calculating still; And yet at last his calculation proves Erroneous; the whole game is lost; and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... "Never the Time and the Place" Robert Browning Song, "Oh! that we two were Maying" Charles Kingsley For He Had Great Possessions Richard Middleton Windle-straws Edward Dowden Jessie Thomas Edward Brown The Chess-board Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton Aux Italiens Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton Song, "I saw the day's white rapture" Charles Hanson Towne The Lonely Road Kenneth Rand Evensong Ridgely Torrence The Nymph's Song to Hylas ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... directions for playing Chess, Backgammon, Checkers, Billiards, Pool, Bagatelle, Bowling, ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... drawing-room and halted in the following chamber, where the walls were adorned with white garlands and the curtains and upholstering were of blue watered-silk. Beyond, in a small drawing-room. Miss Mary sat down to play chess with Maryan; Cara took her place near them in the character of observer, and Irene unrolled in the lamp-light a piece of church stuff, very old and time-worn, which the baron had brought her as a rarity, and which she ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... secretaryship, which seemed to promise a good deal of varied experience, and I had let the year or two run on to four years before the end came. The offer came to me through the last thing in the world I should have put forward as a qualification for a salaried post, and that was chess.' ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... cobbles beneath us, and sent the thrill of it into our teeth, "all this needs is Mary Pickford and a player organ to be a good film!" The only thing we saw that made us homesick was the group of firemen in front of the engine house playing checkers or chess or something. But the town had an historic interest for us as the home of the Girondists of the French Revolution; so we looked up their monument and did proper reverence to them. They were moderate idealists ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... and Ted tried to get interested in a game of chess, but with little success. Bill Witt sought with mouth organ and banjo to buoy up the spirits of his downcast mates and succeeded poorly. Noon mess was served at eleven forty-five and even Jean Cartier, as he dispensed canned beans, brown bread, stewed fruit and tea, forgot to smile ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... table with the motley collection of books borrowed from the library with the very best intentions—books which had hardly been opened before sleep would obliterate everything from his sight; that merry picture of the two medieval enthusiasts playing chess, and those jolly Dickensian paintings of huntsmen at luncheon with grinning waiters and ubiquitous dogs. What a charm they all had! What a merry little spot England had been in those ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... simplest fancies of the normal individual and the impossible imaginings of the lunatic. Every man imagines frequently the appearance of an absent friend, of a landscape he has once seen. The painter draws even the features of an absent model; the practiced chess-master plays games without having the board before him; persons half asleep see the arrival of absentees; persons lost in the wood at night see spirits and ghosts; very nervous people see them at home, and the lunatic sees the most extraordinary and disgusting things—all these are imaginations ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... discourse he was grave and modest; and if he 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 with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... to theaters, etc. In the suburbs I have about half a dozen 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
... this that Angus first impressed us with his real power. We had seen much of him in the years that had passed since he spent his first New Jedboro night beneath our roof. Often and often he would spend the evening with us, chatting on pleasant topics or teaching our Margaret the high things of chess, at which he was well-nigh a master. But I little dreamed then what fateful moves there may be even in a game of chess, what mating and checkmating and sundry other operations may be sublimely mingled in that so ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... 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 penchant ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... the tyro and the expert chess-player—the tyro "free," yet the expert foreseeing and holding the issue of the game in his own hands—is only superficially plausible. There seems, however, one other possible explanatory hypothesis, ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... most striking passages are to be found in this address; one the simile of the force behind nature as the hidden chess player; the other the noble description of the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... for him a good many months—as was the humble duty of the pilot-apprentice: stood a daylight watch and spun the wheel under the severe superintendence and correction of the master. He was a prime chess player and an idolater of Shakespeare. He would play chess with anybody; even with me, and it cost his official dignity something to do that. Also—quite uninvited—he would read Shakespeare to me; not ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... 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 enough he paid for ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... apartment is already sacred and 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 ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... what a colossal move on the political chess-board the Coronation was. Bedford realized this by and by, and tried to patch up his mistake by crowning his King; but what good could that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... had so often hidden himself as a boy. There the satinwood bookcase filled with his dog-eared schoolbooks. On the wall behind it was hanging the same ragged Flemish tapestry, where a faded king and queen were playing chess in a garden, while a company of hawkers rode by, carrying hooded birds on their gauntleted wrists. How well he remembered it all! Every moment of his lonely childhood came back to him as he looked round. He recalled the stainless purity of his boyish life, ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... a game 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 high, Nelson on his column surveying ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... old room at Guldvik for me;—when we sat there of an evening and played chess with the ale jug ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... load his memory with indelible infamy. The story, in substance, I understand to be this—That Lord Braxfield once tried a man for forgery at the Circuit at Dumfries, who was not merely an acquaintance, but an intimate friend of his Lordship, with whom he used to play at chess: That he did this as coolly as if he had been a perfect stranger: That the man was found guilty: That he pronounced sentence of death upon him; and then added, "Now, John, I think I have checkmated you now." A more unfeeling and brutal conduct ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... consists of an 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 in a ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... father was out, allowed him to race up and down the stairs, played at hide-and-seek with him in the passages, let him dance her round and round the lower rooms. Or else she played games with him, cards, chess, tric-trac; or he lay and listened to her while she told him fairy tales; listened with a dreamy half-understanding, with a certainty, underlying all his impatience, that there was nothing to live for now. What did it matter, after all? One moment, life and hope ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... take a piece 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 ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... baffling than subtlety and guile—that is the reason your American 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 ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the hospitality he is enjoying permits him to breakfast from seven till ten, alone, or in company with the family if he chooses. Horses, dogs, and guns for the gentlemen—billiards, the carriage, music, or promenading, with cards, chess, backgammon, or dominos for the ladies, to pass away the day until dinner. At this meal the household and guests unite, and the rich viands, wines, and coffee make a feast for the body and sharpen the wit to a feast of the soul. This society is the freest ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... father. To Opdyke's certain knowledge, the good professor curtailed by hours and hours and hours his more congenial occupations for the sake of helping his son to work out the chess problems in which they both were taking a perfunctory delight. Reed did unfeignedly enjoy his father's company; but that was no reason he should reduce him to a captivity akin to his own. How long had it lasted, anyhow? May, June—nine months. And, in all that time, Olive never ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... nothing loth to find himself in the fresh air again. Some progress had been made like the opening of a chess-match between masters, and yet the more Steel thought of it the more muddled and bewildered did he become. No complicated tangle in the way of a plot had ever been anything like the skein ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... for the 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 ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... language is one thing and memorising an illogical system of visual images—for that is what reading ordinary English spelling comes to—is quite another. A man can learn to play first chess and then bridge in half the time that these two games would require if he began by attempting simultaneous play, and exactly the same principle applies to the ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... 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 ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... given up to dancing; the picture gallery was devoted to chamber music. Chess-players and card-players found remote and quiet rooms especially prepared for them. People who cared for nothing but talking were accommodated to perfection in a sphere of their own. And lovers (in earnest or not in earnest) discovered, in a dimly-lighted conservatory ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... 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 ...
— Suite Mentale • Gordon Randall Garrett
... himself, for a man to have two natures, quite distinct in tastes? He worried himself almost to distraction over the question; but as there was no one to answer it, he drove it from his mind by spending the evening at the Hamiltons' teaching Jessie to play chess. ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... duel, goes on. In such passages every power at the writer's command is needed; unerring directness of thought, and words which clothe this thought as an athlete's garments fit the body. Everything must count, and the movement of the narrative must be sustained to the utmost. The chess-playing scene between Elfride and Knight in A Pair of Blue Eyes is an illustration. Sergeant Troy displaying his skill in handling the sword—weaving his spell about Bathsheba in true snake fashion, is another example. ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... Crossthwaite did not speak without hearers. He could 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 ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... afternoon, if he is well enough, we drive; if not he sleeps, and I get a walk. Later on an old Indian friend of his will sometimes drop in; if not he likes to be read to until dinner. After dinner we play chess—he is a first-rate player. At ten I help him to bed; from eleven to twelve I smoke and study Socialism and all the rest of it that Lynwood is ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... His own actions or to control 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, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... peer for learning and piety either in the time of the first or the second Temple. (94) In his capacity as the chancellor of Solomon, he was the object of the king's special favor. He was frequently invited to be the companion of the king in his games of chess. The wise king naturally was always the winner. One day Solomon left the chess-board for a moment, Benaiah used his absence to remove one of the king's chess-men, and the king lost the game. Solomon gave much thought to the occurrence. He ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... character : karaktero; (drama) rolo. charm : cxarmi; talismano. chaste : cxasta. cheat : trompi. check : haltigi; kontroli. cheek : vango. cheerful : gaja. cheese : fromagxo, chemist : apotekisto, hxemiisto. cheque : cxeko. cherry : cxerizo. chess : sxako. chest : brusto; kesto, (of drawers) komodo. chestnut : kasxtano, ("horse—") marono. chew : macxi, ("—cud") remacxadi. chicory : cikorio. chief : cxef'o, -a. chimney : kamentubo. chin : mentono. china : porcelano. chirp : pepi; (insects) cxirpi. chisel : cxiz'i, -ilo. chocolate ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... him. The Jarl was the most agreeable of hosts; but the King was silent and sullen. The Jarl talked to him in every way to make him cheerful, and brought forward everything he could think of to amuse him; but the King remained stern, and speaking little. At last the Jarl proposed a game of chess, which he agreed to. A chess-board was produced, and they played together. Jarl Ulf was hasty in temper, stiff, and in nothing yielding; but everything he managed went on well in his hands: and he was ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... Oriental influence came into Europe, but that it did come is absolutely certain. The transformation of the Buddha-legend into the Christian legend of Barlaam and Josaphat, the migration of fables and stories, and the introduction of the game of chess furnish the ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... To the Place of the Orient, And the stout Queen sneered, "Ah, well! You are proud and prude, ma belle! But I think I will hazard a guess I shall see you one day playing chess With ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... and the name of the palace was Rosnaree. And upon the level green in front of the regal abode, or in the banqueting-halls, might always be seen noble companies of knights and ladies bright,—some feasting, some playing at the chess, some giving ear to the music of their own harps, some continually shaking the Chain of Silence, and some listening to the poems and tales of heroes of the olden time that were told by the king's ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... imitation of the old Court of France. During these excursions he sometimes partook of the pleasures of the chase, but merely for the sake of reviving an old custom, for in that exercise he found as little amusement as Montaigne did in the game of chess, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... that the bag is my bag." When the Kurd heard my words, he wept and wailed and said, "O my lord the Cadi, my bag is known and what is in it is renowned; therein are castles and citadels and cranes and beasts of prey and men playing chess and draughts. Moreover, in this my bag is a brood-mare and two colts and a stallion and two blood-horses and two long lances and a lion and two hares and a city and two villages and a courtezan and two sharking pimps and a catamite and two gallows-birds and a blind man and two dogs and ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... and after we had all imbibed, the Earl and Uncle Tooter played chess on the great mahogany table in the center of the room; Holmes and Thorneycroft started a game of checkers, as did Lord Launcelot and myself, sitting on the leather-covered divans in the broad bay-window, while ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... quite so well as you and Katy; and all recess-time she wouldn't speak to me, but now we've made up. Dorry is so awfully in love with her that I never can get him to come into the room when she is here, and he blushes when we tease him about her. But this is a great secret. Dorry and I play chess every evening. He almost always beats unless papa comes behind and helps me. Phil has learned too, because he always wants to do every thing that we do. Dorry gives him a castle, and a bishop, and ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... commanding must have a plan of operations. Napoleon said that war is like a game of chess, and that a commander must make his game. He must think it out beforehand, and in such a manner that the enemy will be compelled to play it in his way and be defeated. The general-in-chief must see the end from the beginning, just as Napoleon, sticking his map of Europe ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... a pleasant one for Adelaide, being an earnest of the future for which, if she had not worked hard, she had controlled much. Edgar sang solos to her accompaniment, and put in his rich baritone to her pure if feeble soprano; he played chess with her for an hour, and praised her play, as it deserved: naturally, not thinking it necessary to make love to his sisters, he paid her almost exclusive attention, and looked the admiration he felt. She really ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... "every sin has its antithesis. It's like a chess board—the human mind—with the black men ranged on one side and the white on the other, ready to move, to advance, skirmish, threaten, manoeuvre, attack, and check each other, and the intervening squares represent the ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... table by the fire stood a chess-board, the old carved red and white pieces standing on it in jumbled disarray; for Chloe and her husband, both inveterate chess-lovers, had begun a game which they were unable, through lack of time, to finish; and as his eyes fell on the board Anstice had ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... leaders is past. The analogies and precedents that lead one to forecast the coming of military one-man-dominions, the coming of such other parodies of Caesar's career as that misapplied, and speedily futile chess champion, Napoleon I. contrived, are false. They are false because they ignore two correlated things; first, the steady development of a new and quite unprecedented educated class as a necessary aspect of the expansion of science and mechanism, ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... 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. ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... one is willing to play? one wins and another loses: why there have been as many moves among titled persons, Kings, Queens, Bishops, Lords and Knights, within the last century, as there are in a game at chess. Pawns have been taken and restored in all classes, from the Sovereign, who pawns or loses his crown, to the Lady whose reputation is in pawn, and becomes at last not worth half a crown. Shuffling, cutting, dealing out and 358 dealing in, double dealing and double ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... have also long been accustomed to print in colours. The paper they employ is manufactured from the bark of the mulberry, but is so thin that only one side can be used. They have sorts of games, some like our chess, and cards, and lotto, and we saw the lads in the streets playing ball very much as boys do in ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... paper; he competes in the oratorical contests. One, for example, is a member of the school orchestra; another, perhaps the son or the grandson of an immigrant from Germany, leads the cheers at the track meet; another, himself an immigrant from Russia, plays on the chess team and is one of the brilliant scholars in his class. This last does, at present, have something of the stranger about him, but before long, no doubt, his speech will have become more smooth, his trousers will have begun to show a crease; he will have become quite an interesting and regular figure ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... grace, etc.—which began to come in with Dryden, and has been coming ever since. The comedy Spaniard, like Don Armado in "Love's Labour's Lost," was a familiar figure on the English boards. Middleton took the double plot of his "Spanish Gipsy" from two novels of Cervantes; and his "Game of Chess," a political allegorical play, aimed against Spanish intrigues, made a popular hit and was stopped, after a then unexampled run, in consequence of the remonstrances of Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador. Somewhat later the Restoration stage borrowed ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... 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 ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... strong family likeness to her father—a likeness which had grown upon her as she had become older, and which extended even to voice and manner of speaking. He remembered how he had heard me describe the game of chess I had played with the doctor in days gone by, and with his mind's ear seemed to hear Miss Skinner saying, as though it were ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... 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 while they finished ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... Miss Purcell, who was longing to cry over her novel, to allow him to read for her, since he saw that she was trying her eyes, and therewith made fiasco of a page of delicious dolor; and being challenged to chess by a third, declared that was child's play, and dominoes was the game for science,—whereon, having seated a circle at that absorbing sport, he deserted for a meerschaum and the gentlemen, and in company with Captain Purcell, Mr. McLean, and the rest, rolled up from the hall below ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... space jockey, doing his job in this screwball fight out here in the empty reaches. Back on Earth, there was no war. The statesmen talked, held conferences, played international chess as ever. Neither side bothered the other's satellites, though naturally they were on permanent alert. There just wasn't going to be any Moon station for a while. Nobody knew what there might be on the Moon, but if one side couldn't have it, then the other side ...
— Slingshot • Irving W. Lande
... in their reading, of which there was a good assortment—the daily papers, the magazines and a choice collection of books furnished by the American Library Association. Other groups were intent upon chess or checkers, while in the piano corner were the musically inclined. Sometimes it was a piano or a baritone solo, but most often the boys were singing "Keep the Home Fires Burning," "The Long, Long ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... thickly covered with gold cups, silver salvers, and other such valuables. All this Alleyne examined with curious eyes; but most interesting of all to him was a small ebony table at his very side, on which, by the side of a chess-board and the scattered chessmen, there lay an open manuscript written in a right clerkly hand, and set forth with brave flourishes and devices along the margins. In vain Alleyne bethought him of where he was, and of those laws of good breeding and decorum which should ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for the nations had been utterly ignored in London by the allotment of German Tyrol to Italy. Wilson forbade this and declared that nations could not be treated against their will and moved hither and thither like the pieces in a game of chess. Wilson said that every solution of a territorial question arising out of this war must be arrived at in the interests and in favour of the peoples concerned, and not as a mere balancing or compromise of claims from rival sources; and further, that ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... who talk English, drink beer, like jokes and beat me at chess or table-tennis are people for my money, even if they look like ...
— Accidental Death • Peter Baily
... contained. Yet Philip said there was a world in those books. The room was a small and singularly cosy one, and here, when Mr. Faringfield was not occupied at the mahogany desk, we children might play at chess, draughts, cards, and other games. From this room, one went back into the dining-room, another apartment endeared to me by countless pleasant memories. Its two windows looked Southward across the side grounds (for the hall and great parlour came not so far back) to our house ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... a broad-shouldered, heavy-set, bushy-eyebrowed individual, looked up from the chess-board, annoyed at this interruption of a game which had been in progress since ten o'clock that night. O'Leary grabbed ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... Europe of Paul Morphy, the Chess Champion; including an Historical Account of Clubs, Biographical Sketches of Famous Players, and Various Information and Anecdote relating to the Noble Game of Chess. By Paul Morphy's late Secretary. New York: D. Appleton ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... Shuffle-board, chess, and backgammon, with exercise and pleasant converse, will while away the intervening hours so quickly, that, if you do not keep a bright look-out, you will be surprised by the dinner-bell before you think of your toilet, which, if a luxury to you on shore, will be thrice welcome at sea, ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... Harry was unfitted alike by nature and training. He could sing romantic ditties, and accompany himself with discretion on the piano; he was a graceful although a timid cavalier; he had a pronounced taste for chess; and nature had sent him into the world with one of the most engaging exteriors that can well be fancied. Blond and pink, with dove's eyes and a gentle smile, he had an air of agreeable tenderness and melancholy and the most submissive and caressing manners. But when all is said, he was not the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of these departed abruptly ere the meal was at an end. The Sabbath was observed strictly by the majority of the emigrants. I heard an old woman express her surprise that, "The ship didna gae doon," as she saw some one pass her with a chess-board on the holy day. Some sang Scottish psalms. Many went to service, and in true Scottish fashion came back ill pleased with their divine. "I didna think he was an experienced preacher," ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hall, and up and down, some, squatted Upon their hams, were occupied at chess; Others in monosyllable talk chatted, And some seem'd much in love with their own dress. And divers smoked superb pipes decorated With amber mouths of greater price or less; And several strutted, others slept, and some Prepared for supper ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... built a new one, and Cromwell's soldiers smashed it about, but it was patched up again. It is a very odd house: the front door opens straight into the dining-room, and there are red curtains and a black-and-white marble floor like a chess-board, and there is a secret staircase, only it is not secret now—only rather rickety. It is not very big, but there is a watery moat all round it with a brick bridge that leads to the front door. Then, on the other side ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... flashed through Justine's mind as she reached the landing; but the next moment it gave way to a contradictory feeling. Westy Gaines was not alone in the hall. From under the stairway rose the voices of a group ensconced in that popular retreat about a chess-board; and as Justine reached the last turn of the stairs she perceived that Mason Winch, an earnest youth with advanced views on political economy, was engaged, to the diversion of a circle of spectators, in teaching the Telfer girls chess. The futility of trying ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... met Cousin Chilian, who had been playing a rather prolonged game of chess with a visitor. But Bentley kept on with them, and said good-night with a polite bow, adding, "She must come again, Mr. Leverett, we had ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... one of the most delightful of our resting places, even in the Shenandoah Valley. We passed the days pleasantly, strolling or riding among the groves of black walnut, visiting among the various regiments, amusing ourselves with chess and books. Nothing occurred to interrupt these pleasant pastimes and the monotony of picket duty until the 13th of September, when the Second division was directed to make a reconnoissance to the ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... the wooden balls and "bats"—as racquets are still called in England—were much harder. Cards and dice were passionately played, a game called "triumph" or "trump" being the ancestor of our whist. Chess was played nearly ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... for the girls, red and white and gold—there were sweets by the pound and by the box—and long yards and yards of soft silk from India, to make frocks for the girls—and a real Indian sword for Oswald and a book of Japanese pictures for Noel, and some ivory chess men for Dicky: the castles of the chessmen are elephant-and-castles. There is a railway station called that; I never knew what it meant before. The brown paper and string parcels had boxes of games in them—and big cases of preserved fruits and things. And the shabby old newspaper ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit
... 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, love, When ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 19, 1890 • Various
... followed it out on the marsh, and when it cut into another dyke she followed that, walking on the bank beside the great teazle. A plank bridge took her across between two willows, and after some more such movements, like a pawn on a chess-board, she had crossed three dykes and was at the ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... instead the record of a well-ordered household, in which each man performed the duties assigned to him, duties which gave each enough exercise to tire him out and make him long for the quiet hours of reading or chess-playing, or games, which were to follow in the cabin when the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 56, December 2, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... note has just been given me calling me to Earl, who is ill, but not seriously. Barbara has prescribed for him a game of chess. The desire to see you again has got into my blood. I think I shall be in the new West ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... a secret society, to occupy our subterranean dwelling. In that I fear we overstepped the rules of the school. Of course, Mr. Clark knew of our cave, in fact he visited us there once, lowering his dignity sufficiently to squeeze into the narrow passageway, and playing Bill a game of chess at our club table. He seemed quite pleased with our work, and complimented us very highly on the masterful way in which we had built the underground house. We told him that we had organized a club of the older fellows to play ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... carried to the country of a great Sultan, and when the Sultan heard that there was an ape who could write beautiful poems, he sent for him to the palace, and they had dinner together, and they played at chess afterwards, the ape behaving in all respects like a man, excepting that he could not speak. Then the Sultan sent for his daughter, the Queen of Beauty, to see this great wonder. But when the Queen of Beauty came into the room she was very angry with her father for showing her to a man, for ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... were much in the same state, with little prospect of their coming out. Easterly winds were prevalent, and we were generally at anchor, one half of the ship's company doing nothing, and the other helping them. I soon found that our noble commander was fond of the game of chess and a stiff glass of grog, and I frequently found him en chemise with those companions at daylight on one of the cabin lockers. He was an unmarried man, but a great admirer of the fair sex of all descriptions, ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... them were sipping wine, others were playing cards, others chess, other groups were chatting together, and many were smoking cigarettes while they waited for the coming duels. Nearly all of them wore colored caps; there were white caps, green caps, blue caps, red ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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 from the work of an Alexandrian Greek of the ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... necessary both for play and for aesthetic appreciation, the latter differs essentially from the former by its contemplative nature. For although it may be possible to watch other people playing football or chess or bridge in a purely contemplative spirit and with the deepest admiration, even as the engineer or surgeon may contemplate the perfections of a machine or an operation, yet the concentration on the aim and the next moves constitutes on the part of the players themselves an eminently practical ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... Mrs. Hsueeh would readily come over and converse, on one thing and another, with dowager lady Chia, or have a chat with madame Wang; while Pao-ch'ai came together, day after day, with Tai yue, Ying-ch'un, her sisters and the other girls, either to read, to play chess, or to do needlework, and the pleasure which they derived was ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... first years when he entered as office-boy into the employment of Briggs & Livingstone—the firm at the time of which I am now writing was Lynde, Livingstone & Co. Mr. David Lynde lived in a set of chambers up town, and dined at his club, where he usually passed the evenings at chess with some brother antediluvian. A visit to the theatre, when some old English comedy or some new English ballet happened to be on the boards, was the periphery of his dissipation. What is called society saw nothing of him. He was a rough, ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... by oxen, delivers the water into a trough which passes into a reservoir, roughly fashioned with clay, from which, small channels of about ten inches in width radiate through the plantation. The fields, divided into squares like a chess-board, are thus irrigated by a succession of minute aqueducts. The root of this principle is the reservoir. A certain steady volume of water is required, from which the arteries shall flow throughout a large area of dry ground; ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... a man of the world and knew an unlimited number of racy stories, and even if he repeated some of them unduly, they were better than no stories at all. And then, there was his matchless, unfailing patience in playing chess or backgammon or draughts or bezique, whatever he perceived that the ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... of a game of chess. The generals of the Danes were beaten at it, and they were vexed; and Cennedigh was killed on a hill near Fermoy. He put the Holy Gospels in his breast as a protection, but he was struck through them with a reeking dagger. It was Brodar, ...
— The Kiltartan History Book • Lady I. A. Gregory
... 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 these ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... 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 in ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... track whist trash brick smack crash whim chest crust stump stock which script scrub splash scrap whisk spend shred struck block ship cramp grunt scamp frank chill smash print shrink throb chat twitch stack thump pluck sprang spring drink thrush shrub sham switch check stretch brush chess snatch ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... 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. Eventually the rurales would find ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... gathered his warriors to fight King Ring, the angry Frithiof was playing chess with his friend Bjorn. Hilding urged him to forget his anger and go into battle to fight for his king and his country. "The times are evil, dear foster-son," said the good Hilding, "and you ...
— Northland Heroes • Florence Holbrook
... Those evenings in the bleak December, Curtained warm from the snowy weather, When you and I played chess together, Checkmated by each ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... name of our rook in chess is taken from that of this same bird; though first perverted ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... In chess, the object of the game, namely, to checkmate one's opponent, is of arbitrary adoption; of the possible means of attaining it, there is a great number; and according as we make a prudent use of them, we arrive at our goal. We enter on the ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... vowed The royal gonfalon to rear; Gerein, and his fellow in arms, Gerier; With them many a gallant lance, Full fifteen thousand of gentle France. The cavaliers sit upon carpets white, Playing at tables for their delight: The older and sager sit at the chess, The bachelors fence with a light address. Seated underneath a pine, Close beside an eglantine, Upon a throne of beaten gold, The lord of ample France behold; White his hair and beard were seen, Fair of body, and proud of mien, Who ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... really, when cleared of 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
... fell, her four-and-twenty ladies would play their games of chess. Many a game had Janet won in ...
— Stories from the Ballads - Told to the Children • Mary MacGregor
... read, 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 ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... its name implies, is devoted to chess. Germans patronize it to a great extent. Politics do not enter into ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... tears of rage in my exile—my wanderings—have 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 yours, there is still that of love. How time flies! we are nearing ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was one man (History) who was not quite the all-round athlete of the universe, and was not good at anything more muscular than chess and golf, the eleven others had each his specialty and ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... were printed that he purchased some type and, bringing it home, set up a printing press in London not far from Westminster Abbey. The first English book to be printed was dated 1474 and was called 'The Game of Chess.' Then came a Bible which was presented to the king. From this time on there was practically an end to the handwritten books made by the monks in cloisters and monasteries. Occasionally such a volume was made for the very rich because, as I told you, the elegant still considered paper ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett |
