"Chess" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... must, when I am speaking of Mr. Dillwyn. I never saw anybody so nice. He is teaching me to play chess, Lois, ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... to Turin, by the way? To that city which reminds one of nothing so much as a gigantic chess-board set down upon the banks of the yellow river—that city with never-ending, straight streets, all running at right angles to each other, and whose extremities frame in delicious pictures of wooded hill or ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... and new at once as Nature's self, To rap and knock and enter in our soul ... All we have gained then by our unbelief Is a life of doubt diversified by faith, For one of faith diversified by doubt: We called the chess-board white,—we ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... got rather a tricky chess problem here I can't do." He produced his pocket chess-board. "White mates in ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... on, and found her still an inmate of Glenfern Castle. Destitute of very resource in herself, she yet turned with contempt from the scanty sources of occupation or amusement that were suggested by others; and Mrs. Douglas's attempts to teach her to play at chess and read Shakespeare were as unsuccessful as the endeavours of the good aunts to persuade her to study Fordyce's Sermons ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... of Italy! There should be extradition treaties all over the world to bring this arch-conspirator to justice. The door of his conscience had been knocked at by a thousand bleeding ghosts, and nothing had opened to them. What was Italy in his eyes? A chess-board; and Italians were the chessmen to this cold player with live flesh. England nourished the wretch, that she might undermine the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that other man, if there be one!" Le Gardeur rose and walked angrily across the room two or three times. Angelique was playing a game of chess with Satan for her soul, and felt that ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... sheriffdoms under some of its members connected it closely with the local courts. As a financial body, its chief work lay in the assessment and collection of the revenue. In this capacity it took the name of the Court of Exchequer from the chequered table, much like a chess-board, at which it sat and on which accounts were rendered. In their financial capacity its justices became "barons of the Exchequer." Twice every year the sheriff of each county appeared before these barons and rendered the sum of the fixed rent from royal domains, the Danegeld ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... in, and 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)
... Again, choose, in your 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 when ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Chess is a game which can only be played by two persons at the same time. The requisites are a board consisting of 64 squares of alternate black and white, and 32 pieces of wood, ivory, bone or other composition, which are technically known as "men." The board is so placed between the players ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... reality. She lost not a word; she failed not to observe and regard every movement; she knew, without being seen to look, just what his play of feature and various expressions were; all the while she was calmly embroidering, or idly gazing out of the window, or skilfully playing chess with Mr. ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... could come with us, Mr Knowles. We shall miss you very much. Father, when he looked at his chess-board yesterday, heaved such a tremendous sigh, and I knew that he was thinking of you, and wondering if he will ever find any such ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... then quitting her for another, attacking them all, but attaching themselves to none. My thoughts,—these are the wantons for me. If the weather be too cold or too wet, I take shelter in the Regency coffee-house. There I amuse myself by looking on while they play chess. Nowhere in the world do they play chess so skilfully as in Paris, and nowhere in Paris as they do at this coffee-house; 'tis here you see Legal the profound, Philidor the subtle, Mayot the solid; here you see the most astounding moves, and listen to the sorriest talk, for if a man may be at once ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... beginning 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 ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... 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 ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... eyes at me. "You must write and tell me everything behind the creature's back." I confess I found her rather disquieting company. The evening drew on. Lamps were brought by a man with a nondescript face and very quiet footsteps. Seaton was told to bring out the chess-men. And we played a game, she and I, with her big chin thrust over the board at every move as she gloated over the pieces and occasionally croaked "Check!" after which she would sit back inscrutably staring ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... Newcome's alternate Thursdays in Bryanstone Square, pinched her daughter Mira, engaged in a polyglot conversation with Herr Schnurr, nor Carabossi, the guitarist, and Monsieur Pivier, the celebrated French chess-player, to point out the Boyar. Mira Miles wished she knew a little Moldavian, not so much that she might speak it, but that she might be heard to speak it. Mrs. Miles, who had not had the educational ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... comfort. Memory holds a picture, more vivid than most, of a small boy reading the "Midsummer Night's Dream" by firelight, in a room where candles were lit, and some one touched the piano, and a young man and a girl were playing chess. The Shakespeare was a volume of Kenny Meadows' edition; there are fairies in it, and the fairies seemed to come out of Shakespeare's dream into the music and the firelight. At that moment I think that I was happy; ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... SPECIAL TIMES FOR YOUR RECREATIVE STUDY.—Cultivate some hobby as a relief from your concentrated study of books. Music, some games of cards, chess, billiards, or other relaxations, are admirable means of recuperation. When you indulge in recreation or recreative reading, do not let the mind worry about problems of your previous studies. Make your recreative reading in itself have some aim. Do not allow ...
— How to Study • George Fillmore Swain
... the evening meal, of tea, next partaken of. If it was school night, the voluntary pupils went to their tasks, the masters to their posts; reading men producing their books, writing men their desks, artists painted by candle-light, and cards, chess, or draughts, combined with conversation, and an evening's glass of grog, and a cigar or pipe, served to ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... through a fiery ordeal and I hope you preserved 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 ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... passed without any explanation being sent, or any secret message bidding me be patient. She used to come down to the drawing-room for an hour in the morning; in the evening she was present at dinner, and then would play piquet or chess with her father. During all this time she was so well watched that I could not exchange a glance with her. For the rest of the day she remained in her own room—inaccessible. Noticing that I was chafing at the species of captivity ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... academy? or a State theatre? Should gambling be legal? Should potatoes be boiled in their skins? should dynamiters? Should newspapers publish racing tips? or divorce cases? or comment? The New Journalism. What is the best ninth move in the Evans gambit? Would Morphy have been a first-class chess-player to-day? Is the Steinitz gambit sound? Do plants dream? Ought we to fill up income-tax papers accurately? Shelley and Harriet and Mary. Swift and Vanessa and Stella. Lord and Lady Byron. Did Mrs. Carlyle deserve it? The limits of biography; of photography in painting; of the ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... late when we returned to the khan, we found everybody still up. The room in which we were to sleep (there was only one room) was filled with a crowd of loiterers, and tobacco smoke. Some were playing games similar to our chess and backgammon, while others were looking on, and smoking the gurgling narghile, or water-pipe. The bicycles had been put away under lock and key, and the crowd gradually dispersed. We lay down in our clothes, and ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... asked 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
... unable to endure contact with the outer world, or even that of the loving home circle which environed him with anxious tenderness. He could not read or write: a favorite piece of music from his young sister's piano, a game of chess with his mother in the evening, were his only recreations—his only excitement the letters which still came from Venice, for which he looked with a sick longing, at which one cannot wonder on reading them and remembering what a companionship it was that he had lost. Urged by his brother ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... easy to play a game at chess with a far superior player, then at least one learns something; but impossible to sit at a chess board with a child who throws all into confusion. The national chessboard is very confused in the White ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... Prospero forgave them; and, upon their engaging to restore his dukedom, he said to the king of Naples, "I have a gift in store for you too;" and opening a door, shewed him his son Ferdinand, playing at chess with Miranda. ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... together with chess, were greatly in vogue in mediaeval Wales, and are frequently alluded to in the Mabinogion and other early works. The four minor games or feats (gogampau) among the Welsh were playing the harp, chess, backgammon, and dice. The ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... 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 to fix the spasmodic attention ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... 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 ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... among them, though the motion had been pretty lively during the passage across the Bay of Biscay; and by this time they had thoroughly settled down and become almost as perfectly at home in the ship as though they had been born on salt water. The gentlemen chatted, smoked, walked the poop, and played chess together, romped with the children, or read aloud to the ladies whilst they reclined in their deck-chairs and pretended to work, and otherwise made themselves generally useful. This was the usual disposition ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... game of elegance and interest, and the being a good chess-player, carries with it a certain impression of general ability and of intellectual activity and resource. Perhaps I may allow that playing at chess adds a certain degree of interest to the perusal of the history of a campaign, whether ancient or modern, with ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... 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, breezy, thickset old gentleman, betrothed from his birth ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the haunt in question. A flight of stairs brought them to a small room in which were exposed the daily newspapers; another ascent, and they were in a room devoted to magazines, chess, and refreshments; yet another, and they reached the department of weekly publications; lastly, at the top of the house, they found a lavatory, and a chamber for the use of those who desired to write. The walls of this last retreat were of blue plaster and sloped inwards from ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... gaming, and naturally leads to gaming for something. It is sacrificing time, and that, too, for the worst of purposes. I have kept house for nearly forty years; I have reared a family; I have entertained as many friends as most people; and I have never had cards, dice, a chess-board, nor any implement of gaming, under my roof. The hours that young men spend in this way are hours murdered; precious hours, that ought to be spent either in reading or in writing, or in rest, preparatory to the duties of the dawn. Though I ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... hence the amazement and blank wonder of the public at some of the finest passages of Turner, which look like a mere meaningless and disorderly work of chance; but, rightly understood, are preparations for a given result, like the most subtle moves of a game of chess, of which no bystander can for a long time see the intention, but which are, in dim, underhand, wonderful way, bringing out their foreseen and ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... like this," he said, "to have sat there for two or three mortal hours arguing about stale ideas! Threshing over the straw—almost as silly an occupation as chess—when we might have been out here, being alive! But it must have seemed natural to you to hear me going on like that." And then with a burst, before she ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... smoking and gossiping, we also played games, either chess or backgammon or munkula. This last is an exceedingly primitive and ancient game—it must date almost as far back as jackstones or knucklebones. I have seen the natives in Central Africa and the Indians ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... 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; because we compared them only to the parts of the chess-board, ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... are far more amusable, far more jovial and open-hearted. They have their coffee-houses every night, and their religious festivities periodically; they play at all sorts of complicated games, resembling draughts and chess, and find means ingeniously to vary their sports. If they compromise their dignity, they succeed in whiling away their leisure time far more successfully than the pride-stuffed Levantine. One of their amusements—called the game of plaff—is worth mentioning, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... an appetite. But since to overcome is pleasant, it must follow, of course, that amusements where there is field for rivalry, as those of music and disputations, are pleasant; for it frequently occurs, in the course of these, that we overcome; also chess, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... our Redeemer holding the world in his hand, and on the other the figure of a serpent marvellously contorted, per-adventure in token of the victory which Jesus atchieved over the enemy of the human race. That noble chess-board, the men whereof were of gold and silver, was also in the Monastery in the days of King Don Alfonso the Wise, but it hath long since been lost, no man knoweth how. Moreover there is in this Sacristy a precious stone of great size, ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... shop, turned on all the lights, put the basket of ruddy apples on the counter, straightened the pile of old magazines and pulled out the carom board, the box of chess and checkers. He took a last housewifely look around, then put on his hat and coat and started out. There was pain and anger and a terrible determination in ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... Olivia had a move to make. In fact, that she wanted to set us all to making moves. She proposed a chess-club, for the winter, to bring us together regularly; to include half a dozen families, and meet by turn at the ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... seasonings. A woman that haggles over herself, my poor boy, and only means to inspire love! Well, have her like an extra horse—for show. The match between the sofa and confessional, black and white, queen and knight, conscientious scruples and pleasure, is an uncommonly amusing game of chess. And if a man knows the game, let him be never so little of a rake, he wins in three moves. Now, if I undertook a woman of that sort, I should start with the deliberate purpose of——" His voice sank to a whisper over the last words in Armand's ear, and he went before ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... the desk to an old chess table and, sitting down, began to move the pieces this way and that. "The nineteenth of February—the nineteenth of February." He saw again a firelit room, and heard the tapping of maple boughs against a window. ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... American loans, dexterously appealing to the much-overworked Monroe Doctrine every time his country was threatened by a French or German or British blockade. But his mind was of no small caliber. He could hold his own not only at his own game of international chess, but in the cultured discussion of polite topics. Orme knew of him as a clever after-dinner speaker, a man who could, when he so desired, please greatly ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... own. He feels no more hate than love. For him there is no one but himself: all other creatures are mere ciphers. The force of his will consists in the imperturbable calculations of his egotism: he is an able chess-player whose opponent is all humankind, whom he intends to checkmate. His success is due as much to the qualities he lacks as to the talents he possesses. Neither pity, nor sympathy, nor religion, nor attachment to any idea whatsoever would have power to turn him from his path. He has ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... me at chess," laughed the young man, "and will bet me a jar of peach wine to a box of ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... turquoise. Again, in "The Deerslayer" three castles of a curious set of chessmen are given in one part of the story to the Indians. Later on, two other castles of the same set make their appearance. This is a singular mistake for Cooper to overlook, for chess was a game of ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... to play a kind of chess, which appeared to me to be essentially different from that game as played by the Persians, the Indians, and other oriental nations, both with regard to the lines drawn on the board, the form of the chess-men, and the moves, from which I should rather conclude it to be ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... driven from the field but by a deluge from a fire-engine; when stumbling down-stairs, guided by the banisters, she finally dismayed her father, who thought her long ago in safety, by emerging from the house, dragging after her a marble-topped chess table, when half the upper windows ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... verses with a paper cutter. In front of him stand, facing each other, KEGEL and KAeFERSTEIN on one side, SPITTA on the other, thus representing the two choruses in Schiller's "Bride of Messina." The young men stand in the midst of a diagram drawn with chalk on the floor and separated, like a chess-board, into sixty-four rectangles. On the high stool in front of the office desk WALBURGA is sitting. Waiting in the background stands the house steward QUAQUARO, who might be the manager of a wandering circus and, in the capacity of athlete, its main attraction. His speech is ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... chaffed him on his flukes. He had not the temperament of a billiard-player. Still, I have heard that he played a fair game at St. Stephen's; but I can hardly believe it without first-hand testimony. I am willing to believe, however, that he was a good chess-player. Certainly he had a head for it But chess is a vile game for a brain-worker, whose recreations should never ...
— Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh • George W. Foote
... Serapis stood and toiled in mechanical magic of discipline. They tended those rows of guns, as Lowell girls the rows of looms in a cotton factory. The Parcae were not more methodical; Atropos not more fatal; the automaton chess-player ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... of which was hidden under his jacket, while the barrel, pointed towards the ground, glittered in the moonlight. Pressing the weapon to his side, he attentively examined the square shadows cast by the piles of timber. The ground looked like a chess-board, with black and white squares clearly defined by alternate patches of light and shade. The sawyers' tressels in the centre of the plot threw long, narrow fantastic shadows, suggesting some huge geometrical figure, upon a strip of bare grey ground. The rest of the yard, ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... had chess for those who played it, whist, cribbage, books, backgammon, and shovelboard. In all weathers, fair or foul, calm or windy, we were every one on deck, walking up and down in pairs, lying in the boats, leaning over the side, or chatting in a lazy group together. We had no lack of music, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... when feebleness has become so feeble as even to invent a theory, making thinness of voice, weakness of stamina, and general emasculation literary virtues; when intellect can find adequate interest only in the chess-puzzles of a Browning, and the sense of humor can find adequate sustenance only in the table-leaping antics of a Mark Twain, and the conscience can be goaded into remorse only by the sight of actual starvation, it is well to turn to these Russians and ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... 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 ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... to silence, chess, books, and mischief, except when a treat of facetious small talk was got up for their benefit. Any attempt of the ladies to join in the conversation was replied to with a condescending levity that reduced Ethel to her girlhood's awkward sense of forwardness and presumption; Mary was ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ethnographical chess-board have been for centuries rather tribal than national, and are still rather philosophical than political, rather idealistic than practical, rather dreamy than adventurous. To organize this population for self-support and self-defence, to ignore differences, racial and religious, ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... comrades slept Sheridan was moving the men on his chess board. Young in years, but great in experience, he was never more eager and never more clear of mind than on this, one of the most eventful days of his life. He saw the opportunity, and he was resolved that it should not escape ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... lies, in triumphantly victorious humor, in the early days of June, Year 1547. Johann Friedrich of Saxony had been, by some Imperial Court-Council or other,—Spanish merely, I suppose,—doomed to die. Sentence was signified to him while he sat at chess: "Can wait till we end the game," thought Johann;—"PERGAMUS," said he to his comrade, "Let us go on, then!" Sentence not to be executed ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... papers have to go outside the field of general news. They go to the dazzling levels of society, to scandal and crime, to sports, pictures, actresses, advice to the lovelorn, highschool notes, women's pages, buyer's pages, cooking receipts, chess, whist, gardening, comic strips, thundering partisanship, not because publishers and editors are interested in everything but news, but because they have to find some way of holding on to that alleged host of passionately interested readers, who ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... and the Duke came among the rest; and Lord Anglesea solicited admirably, and I did wonders. But, after all, the matter was put off till Monday, and then we are to be at it again. I dined with Lord Mountjoy, and looked over him at chess, which put me in mind of Stella and Griffyth.(2) I came home, and that dog Patrick was not within; so I fretted, and fretted, and what ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... hourly more difficult to carry through, until it was finally subverted by De Wet. Many of the commanding officers had as little knowledge of Kitchener's purpose as the pawns which are moved by the hands of the chess player. ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... astonishing, my conception is clear and penetrating, if not hurried: I can make excellent impromptus at leisure, but on the instant could never say or do anything worth notice. I could hold a tolerable conversation by the post, as they say the Spaniards play at chess, and when I read that anecdote of a duke of Savoy, who turned himself round, while on a journey, to cry out "a votre gorge, marchand de Paris!" I said, "Here is ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... where the Social was to be held—a large, lofty room, genial, clean, and well-lighted, The floor was bare, but a red rug before the leaping fire gave a touch of cosiness. Small tables were scattered everywhere; draughts here, dominoes there, chess elsewhere, cards in other places. Chairs were distributed with a studied air of casual disorder. Newspapers littered a side-bench. The grand piano, by Cadenza of The Emporium, stood diagonally across the left centre, and on it lay the violin-case ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... that will work," replied Ortigosa. "This is scientific politics. Ruffianism converted into philosophy. We are playing a game of chess with Father Martin and we are going to see if ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... I've brought some games,' she went on. 'Draughts and cards—but they all mean counting. I wish I'd brought chess, but I can't play chess. What can we ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... individual in the neighborhood, blessed with a large bump for mechanics, and good nature, made me a sort of wide bench, which, covered with a neat plaid, looks quite sofa-like. A little pine table, with oilcloth tacked over the top of it, stands in one corner of the room, upon which are arranged the chess and cribbage boards. There is a larger one for dining purposes, and as unpainted pine has always a most dreary look, F. went everywhere in search of oilcloth for it, but there was none at any of the bars. At last, "Ned," the Humboldt Paganini, remembered ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... by the slovenly shoeing of a horse, causes his lameness, and, he stumbling, the career of his world-conquering rider ends, and the destinies of empires are changed. A generous officer permits an imprisoned monarch to end his game of chess before leading him to the block; and meanwhile the usurper dies, and the prisoner reascends the throne. An unskillful workman repairs the compass, or malice or stupidity disarranges it, the ship mistakes her course, the waves swallow a Caesar, and a new chapter is written ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... word is Persian, with many meanings, e.g. a cheek (Lalla "Rookh"); a "rook" (hero) at chess; a rhinoceros, etc. The fable world-wide of the wundervogel is, as usual, founded upon fact: man remembers and combines but does not create. The Egyptian Bennu (Ti-bennuphoenix) may have been a reminiscence of gigantic pterodactyls and other winged monsters. From ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... at Chetah a chess board in a box ten inches square with a miniature tree six inches high on its cover. The figure of a man in chains leaning upon a spade near a wheelbarrow, stood under the tree. The expression of the face, the details of the clothing, the links of the chains, the limbs ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... hour, but in a second. M. Noirtier, who, on the previous night, was the old Jacobin, the old senator, the old Carbonaro, laughing at the guillotine, the cannon, and the dagger—M. Noirtier, playing with revolutions—M. Noirtier, for whom France was a vast chess-board, from which pawns, rooks, knights, and queens were to disappear, so that the king was checkmated—M. Noirtier, the redoubtable, was the next morning 'poor M. Noirtier,' the helpless old man, at the tender mercies of the ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Chess and backgammon, Chinese cards and dice, afford a continual diversion to both sexes at the court, and there are many skilful players among them. The Chinese have established a sort of "lottery," of which they have the monopoly. It is little ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... my father allowed me to visit a brother of his, who lived in the country, about thirty miles from Benares. My uncle had two sons, of nearly my own age, and several daughters. With the former I rode, played chess, and engaged in such sports as are not forbidden to my profession; but my female cousins I seldom saw, as they rarely left their Zenana, into which I was not permitted to enter. I was of an age to be desirous of becoming better acquainted with my female cousins, especially after ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... nation of mighty conjurors created a man out of brass and wood, and leather, and endowed him with such ingenuity that he would have beaten at chess, all the race of mankind with the exception of the great Caliph, Haroun Alraschid. (*22) Another of these magi constructed (of like material) a creature that put to shame even the genius of him who made it; for so great were its reasoning powers that, in a second, it performed ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... anything to drink. He depends upon Ralph, and it will be harder for me when he is not with us. His attitude towards me is just about what it has always been. I try to amuse him by reading the newspapers and with games; we have a chess-board. At times he seems grateful, and then he will suddenly grow tired and hard to control. Once or twice I have had to call in Dr. Magruder, who ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... they lived happily by the chase. Naisi's two brothers went with them, and thus the three sons of Usnach were all in Alba. Then the story goes on to say that Fergus, one of Conor's nobles, goes to seek the exiles, and Naisi and Deirdre, while playing at the chess, hear from the shore 'the cry of a man of Erin.' It is against Deirdre's will that they finally leave Alba with Fergus, who says, "Birthright is first, for ill it goes with a man, although he be great and prosperous, if he does not see daily his ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... as it happened, Lucy was playing chess with her father; and her heart, though not remorseful, was as heavy as George could have wished. But she did not let Eugene see that she was troubled, and he was pleased when he won three games of ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... 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 ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... Browning "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 ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... and Germany. Prince Eugene and Marlborough restored the peace and the political equilibrium of Europe. In England, the different parties in Parliament, the frequenters of the clubs and coffee-houses, were then watching every move on the political chess-board of Europe, and criticising the victories of their generals and the treaties of their ambassadors. In Germany, the nation took but a passive part. It was excluded from all real share in the great questions of the day; and, if it showed any sympathies, they were confined to the simple admiration ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... violent storm-wind which rushes from the mountain to the valley beneath, and in its fury snaps asunder the trunks of large trees as if they were but slender reeds, and carries the wooden houses from one side of a river to the other as easily as we could move the pieces on a chess-board. After an hour had passed, they told Rudy that it was all over, and he might go to sleep; and, fatigued with his long walk, he readily slept at ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... bank. In other places it looks 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 he improves his fallow ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... games of chance for high stakes—undoubtedly a most degrading form of vice. And one may say generally that if a man finds himself with nothing to do, he is sure to choose some amusement suited to the kind of power in which he excels,—bowls, it may be, or chess; hunting or painting; horse-racing or music; cards, or poetry, heraldry, philosophy, or some other dilettante interest. We might classify these interests methodically, by reducing them to expressions of the three fundamental powers, the factors, ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... which I thought out most cleverly, with the utmost care and the utmost precaution, the one which I shrouded in the greatest darkness and mystery, the one which it took the biggest generalship to carry through. It was a regular game of chess, played according to strict scientific and mathematical rules. And yet Ganimard ended by unravelling the knot. Thanks to him, they know the truth to-day on the Quai des Orfevres. And it is a truth quite out of the common, ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... altered and added to so often that it had at last arrived at a complex ugliness which was not altogether displeasing. The materials for its structure had all been drawn at different periods from the same stone quarry, and the chequered look of new bits and old bits had a hint of the chess-board. Here Samson Mountain dwelt on his own land in the midst of ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... administration, and versed in all the traditions of diplomacy. His avenger and successor, Hideyoshi, was a totally different type of soldier: a son of peasants, an untrained genius who had won his way to high command by shrewdness and courage, natural skill of arms, and immense inborn capacity for all the chess-play of war. With the great purpose of Nobunaga he had always been in sympathy; and he actually carried it out,—subduing the entire country, from north to south, in the name of the Emperor, by whom he was appointed Regent (Kwambaku). Thus universal peace was temporarily ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... another human soul. How could there be? It was a world of pure reason, where human personality had no place. What puzzled me was why he should feel the absence of this. One wouldn't you know, in an intricate problem of geometry or a game of chess. I asked him, but he didn't understand the question. I puzzled over it a good deal, for it seemed to me that if Hollond felt lonely, there must be more in this world of his than we imagined. I began to wonder if there was any truth in fads ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... Almagro, "rascals," says Calancha, "worthy of Manco's favor." Obliged by the civil wars of the conquistadores to flee from the Pizarros, they were glad enough to find a welcome in Uiticos. To while away the time they played games and taught the Inca checkers and chess, as well as bowling-on-the-green and quoits. Montesinos says they also taught him to ride horseback and shoot an arquebus. They took their games very seriously and occasionally violent disputes arose, one of which, as we shall see, was to have fatal consequences. They were kept informed ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... too, began to rise, and it blew so fresh that they retired to the cabin, where Albert occupied himself with a game of chess, and Mary read, with evident pleasure, such parts of her dearly-prized Bible which suited the state of her mind, occasionally calling Albert's attention to some passage ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... very seldom came and made himself agreeable; playing an occasional game of chess, and more often regaling Daisy with a history of his expeditions. Other visitors Daisy had from Melbourne, now and then; but her best friend for real service, after her father and Juanita, was Dr. Sandford. He took great care of ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... his own ideal of a well-dressed man. All the contestants in a chess tournament could have played on his clothes at one time, and the ox-blood stripes on his shirt exactly matched the color of his necktie and socks. He had concluded his interview with Morris on the morning following Henochstein's fiasco, before Abe's arrival ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... heard the wind as he was playing chess with Lois. Lois was Captain Jacob's wife. And Captain Jacob listened to the wind and forgot about the game of chess that he was playing, so that Lois beat him two games. That made Captain Jacob angry, for Lois didn't care much about chess and couldn't play as well as Captain Jacob ...
— The Sandman: His Sea Stories • William J. Hopkins
... one with a hundred thousand failures, a gray-haired, neat man, who had been everything and done nothing, and who now said evasively that he was "in the collection business." He read Dickens and played a masterful game of chess. He liked to have it thought that his past was brave with mysterious splendors. He spoke hintingly of great lawyers. But he had been near to them only as a clerk for a large law firm. He was grateful to any one for noticing him. Like most of the failures, ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... precisely how and when the 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
... 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 which the creature clings for support with its ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... 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
... been stated by careful students that the original stories in the world number but two hundred and fifty; but we have not forgotten our arithmetic, and we have learned chess, so we know something of the manifold combinations of numbers, and we ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various
... Catherine was more unconquered than invulnerable as to love, was paying court to her. The play of all these passions strangely complicated those of politics,—making, as it were, a double game of chess, in which both parties had to watch the head and heart of their opponent, in order to know, when a crisis came, whether the one would ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... in their chariots, harpers in hundreds, smiths with gleaming spears and shields and harness for battle steeds and chariots; troops of men and boys leading racehorses; jewellers with gold drinking-horns, and brooches, and pins, and ear-rings, and costly gems of all kinds, and chess-boards of silver and gold, and golden and silver chessmen in bags of woven brass; dyers with their many-coloured fabrics; bands of jugglers; drovers goading on herds of cattle; shepherds driving their sheep; huntsmen with spoils of the chase; dwellers in the lakes or by the fish-abounding ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... inlaid. There were apartments in this palace sufficient to lodge two princes of the highest rank with their retinues.... The emperor has another beautiful palace, with a large court-yard paved with handsome flags in the style of a chess-board. ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... in the sunshine, studying the week's Paris newspapers with dim, kindly eyes, or played interminable chess games with his ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... gallery, where three or four hundred of the Vizier's Albanian guards were lounging. In an antechamber, which opened from the gallery, a number of officers were smoking, and in the middle, on the floor, two old Turks were seriously engaged at chess. ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... presided over my pastimes — He taught me to brew beer, to make cyder, perry, mead, usquebaugh, and plague-water; to cook several outlandish delicacies, such as ollas, pepper-pots, pillaws, corys, chabobs, and stufatas. — He understands all manner of games from chess down to chuck-farthing, sings a good song, plays upon the violin, and dances a hornpipe with surprising agility. — He and I walked, and rode, and hunted, and fished together, without minding the vicissitudes of the ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... night's sleep. And so we rumbled along, through the vast fields of sugar-cane, now mostly tied in huge sheaves upright, through boundless stretches of richly-cultivated soil, intersected with the regularity of a chess-board by the rivulets and channels of a laborious irrigation. Here and there stood the high frames made by planting four bamboos in a square and wickering the top, whereon the ryots sit when the crops are ripening, to watch against thieves and cattle, and to drive away the birds of the ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... Then, it seemed, everything had a latent life in it. He had suspected as much. "There is always a something," said he, "in what we make, not only beyond what we intend to make, but different from it. We study a long time the powers of position,—in chess, for example;—how much is produced by one move that we did not anticipate, and perhaps cannot ascertain,—certainly not prevent! How many times we are wittier than we meant to be,—striking out, by our unconscious blow, thoughts related to the one we utter, but far more brilliant,—and ourselves ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... games on chequered boards or other delineations, and persons of superior rank are in general versed in the game of chess, which they term main gajah, or the game of the elephant, naming the pieces as follows: king, raja; queen or vizir, mantri; bishop or elephant, gajah; knight or horse, kuda; castle, rook, or chariot, ter; and pawn or foot-soldier, bidak. For check they use the word sah; and for checkmate, mat or ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... strangely contrasted with the grave and self-denying habits to which the Dominicans were devoted in their neighboring cells. The festive season was nearly at an end, for it was the 20th of February, but the evening had been more than usually gay, and had been spent in games at chess, tables, or backgammon, reading romances of chivalry, harping and singing. King James himself, brave and handsome, and in the prime of life, was the blithest of the whole joyous party. He was the most accomplished ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... admit 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 ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... it was 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
... 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 day's work ...
— 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
... and all the merry games, which kept the little circle round the cabin-lamp so deep in innocent amusement, that a hurricane might have howled overhead without their hearing it; but he freely owned that he had no talent for whist, and that he didn't know a knight from a castle upon the chess-board. ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... and there, or a walk, or a concert, or an hour on the church organ, when Reggie would blow and Mr. Gray, who was musical, would play as nobody in the town, not excepting the organist, could play. Or a game of chess in Mrs. Gray's drawing-room, while Elaine played or sang to them and ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... energy, their intelligence—when these show above the groundwork—are monstrous. I have known a Russian learn Chinese within six months. English! they learn it while you are talking to them. The children play at chess and study the violin ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome |
