"Checkmate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... every thing that we do. Dorry gives him a castle, and a bishop, and a knight, and four pawns, and then beats him in six moves. Phil gets so mad that we can't help laughing. Last night he buttoned his king up inside his jacket, and said, 'There! you can't checkmate me now, any way!' ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... the river-side at Black Rock discovered the two British vessels lying at anchor under the guns of Fort Erie, a British work on the opposite side of the Niagara River, that there flows placidly along, a stream more than a mile wide. Zealous for distinction, and determined to checkmate the enemy in their design, Elliott resolved to undertake the task of cutting out the two vessels from beneath the guns of the British fort. Fortune favored his enterprise. It happened that on that very day a detachment of sailors from the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... punish the perpetrators of the crimes; but, as the force of the Indians was, numerically speaking, very strong, therefore it required, in order to insure success, a well organized command to match them and checkmate their plans at once. It required time and much labor for the officers in charge of the military district to arrange and complete their plans. Every man who left our post ran the risk of losing his life; ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... executed, Hooker, with suddenness, moved up the Rappahannock, crossed at Richard's Ford, moved up the Rapidan, crossed at Ely and Germanna Fords, turned east and south and came into the Wilderness. He meant to pass through and, with three great columns, checkmate Lee at Fredericksburg. Before he could do so Lee shook himself free, left to watch the Rappahannock, and Sedgwick, ten thousand pawns and an able knight, and himself ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... enlighten you. Daily your books are more widely read. My enemy is a great novel reader. You publish that story, and what results? You not only tell that enemy my story, but you show him my way out of the difficulty, and show him how he can checkmate my every move. Perhaps, after I ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... all the consequences flowing from it—collided with the efforts of free nations to build a just and peaceful world. The "cold war" between the communists and the free world is nothing more or less than the Soviet attempt to checkmate and defeat our peaceful purposes, in furtherance of their ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... patient; he renewed his vow to hold the false religion up to ridicule and laughter, thinking, by encompassing the downfall of a single advocate, thus to prove his contention and checkmate its ever-widening influence. He became obsessed by this idea; he schemed and he contrived; he used to the utmost the powers of his Oriental mind. From his vantage-point above the cloister he heard ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... parade scene must for ever be upon the traitors concerned. It was certain that dastardly influences were at work, but thanks to the sterling loyalty of certain men from among the Dutch population, the plans of the conspirators were more or less known, and arrangements were made to checkmate them. All honour to these true patriots who took a big risk for the safety of ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... 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 game of our ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... swiftly, round to the pantry, if Jack did not hear the deep, indignant breaths she vainly tried to master. The rest of the evening repeated the indignities of the afternoon. She was watched, guarded, baffled. Proudly she relinquished every attempt to checkmate; and her mother was not there; for the moment there was no anxiety on that score. But the sense of deep breathing did not leave her. What wouldn't Jack do? She was quite sure that he would lie, if, technically, he had not lied already. The stick had been in the hall near the pantry. If ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the beginning, the very thought shocked them. In that lay their safety. Shame is the recoil of God's image from the touch of sin. Shame is sin's first checkmate. It is man's vantage for a fresh pull up. There are only two places where there is no shame: where there is no sin; where sin is steeped deepest in. The extremes are always jostling elbows. Instantly the sense of shame suggested a help. A simple bit of ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... his engagement, he raised this immense sum, much of it being gathered in halfpence, and carried on horseback to the appointed trysting-place. But Lawers was better than his word, for soldiers surrounded the house, and made the Macgregors prisoners. The game ended with checkmate, when the duped freebooters paid the death penalty in Edinburgh. Colonel David R. Williamson, the present laird of Lawers, has been long noted for his public spirit and eminent ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... the north, New France counterchecks that by sending Portneuf in April of 1749, only a year after the peace, to the Toronto portage where the Indians come from the Upper Lakes by way of Lake Simcoe. What is now known as Toronto is named Rouille, after a French minister; and as if this were not checkmate enough to the English advancing westward, the Sulpician priest from Montreal, Abbe Picquet, zealously builds a fort straight north of Oswego, on the south side of the St. Lawrence, to keep the Iroquois loyal to France. Picquet calls his fort "Presentation." His enemies call it "Picquet's Folly." ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... batteries were sufficiently strengthened to compel the British fleet to retire. Filled by this success with new enthusiasm for his Eastern projects, the Emperor of the French devised and set on foot a scheme for the alliance of Turkey and Persia in order to checkmate the ambitions of either Russia or Austria. About the end of April an envoy from the Shah arrived at Finkenstein. He was received with great demonstrations, and France was delighted to see the kings of the East seeking, as she believed, her Emperor's ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... to say nothing of a state of war, can ever be to the advantage of capital, and surely it is obvious that if some arch-schemer were using the grievances of the Uitlanders for his own ends the best way to checkmate him would be to remove those grievances. The suspicion, however, did exist among those who like to ignore the obvious and magnify the remote, and throughout the negotiations the hand of Great Britain was weakened, as her adversary had doubtless calculated that it would be, by an earnest ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... who had defeated the plans of the Holy Alliance in South America, was now prime minis-ter. He saw his chance to checkmate Metternich for a second time. The English and Russian fleets were already in the Mediterranean. They were sent by governments which dared no longer suppress the popular enthusiasm for the cause of the Greek patriots. The French navy appeared ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... Tom murmured. Though jubilant, the young inventor realized that this was only the first step in his plan to checkmate the Brungarian rebels. ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton
... he hoped taken measures to checkmate Argyll, Montrose joined the army, which had now swelled to twenty-five thousand men, was the first to cross the Tweed at Coldstream, and marched straight on Newcastle. The town surrendered without firing a shot, and Montrose sent a letter to ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... Warren," said the criminologist. "As a chess-player in the little game, you are a wonder. But, I think I may at last call 'Checkmate.'" ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... have trod it before, quicker or slower, with more or less comprehension and presence of mind. The greatest skill strikes out nothing for itself, from its own peculiar resources; the nature of the game is a thing determinate and fixed: there is no royal or poetical road to checkmate your adversary. There is no place for genius but in the indefinite and unknown. The discovery of the binomial theorem was an effort of genius; but there was none shown in Jedediah Buxton's being able to multiply 9 figures by 9 in his head. If he could have ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Thwaite,—and now the more possible because he had money at his command. If this should occur, then would the game which the Countess and her friends were playing, be altogether lost. Then would the checkmate have been absolute. The reader will have known that such a step had never been contemplated by the man, and will also have perceived that it would have been altogether opposed to the girl's character; but it is hoped that the ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... halt the German offensive at this point, and especially if they could develop a sufficiently powerful counteroffensive to strike doubt into the confident expectations of the armies of the Central Powers, then the strategical plan had reached a check, which might or might not be a checkmate, as the fortunes of war might determine. If, on the other hand, the stand made by the Allies at this point should prove ineffective, and if the counteroffensive should reveal that the German hosts had been able to establish ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... my confusion. Happily, I took the line of fainting, and melting into torrents of tears, which relieved me greatly. At present, Henri is in my room. He watches by me, nurses me, and is really most kind. What can I do? What a checkmate! This will not prove very satisfactory to ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... of cities" seems to have resembled our chess or draughts. The board was divided into five parts. Each player tried to checkmate the other by the skillful use of his men. Games of hazard with dice and astragaloi were most likely greater favorites with the topers than the intellectual ones hitherto described. The number of dice was at first three, afterwards ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Chattanooga and Atlanta, and can stand a month's interruption to our communications. I do not believe the Confederate army can reach our railroad-lines except by cavalry-raids, and Wilson will have cavalry enough to checkmate them. I am clearly of opinion that the best results will follow my contemplated movement through Georgia. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... of checkmate, and Lionel stood looking at the servant—as if the man could telegraph some impossible aerial message to his master to bring him ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the realities of things. Bolingbroke has not a word now about the cause of the Stuarts; for the moment he cannot think of that. His new scheme is to make out that his enemies were, after all, the true Jacobites; he will checkmate them that way—"in a month, if you please." On the very same day Mr. John Barber, the printer of some of Swift's pamphlets, afterwards an Alderman and Lord Mayor, writes to Swift and tells him, speaking ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... this man. Napoleon gained the field without prejudice; but this man enters the list with hate and prejudice arrayed against him. He plays the pawns of chance with literature, religion, politics, and moves the queen so as to checkmate all adversaries. He flouts love, but to show the world that he yet knows the ideal, he occasionally pictures truth and trusting affection in his speeches and books. This entire game of life is to him ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... shrug of her pretty shoulders: "To go to the opera is to go to the devil. But what matters it? It is my destiny." Poor Mme. Arnould scolded, shuddered, and prayed, and ended it, as she thought, by shutting the girl up in a convent. But Louis XV. got wind of this threatened checkmate, and a royal mandate took her out of the convent walls which had threatened to immure her for life. Anne was placed with Clairon, the great tragedienne, to learn acting, and with Mlle. Fel to learn singing. ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... overdrive against an enemy squadron off Meriden. They would yearn passionately to have their ships equipped with apparatus by which it could vanish from a place where it was a target to reappear elsewhere, unharmed, and make the enemy its target. Two fleets equipped with the new device might checkmate ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... quite Roman," sneered Joseph at his younger brother, once the Brutus of the Jacobin clubs. But Lucien was proof against all the splendours of the royal match; he was madly in love with a Madame Jouberthon, the deserted wife of a Paris stockbroker; and in order to checkmate all Napoleon's attempts to force on a hated union, he had secretly married the lady of his choice at the village of Plessis-Chamant, hard by his country house ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... idea whatever as to what to do. He had been placed in some puzzling dilemmas in private life, and had passed through some serious crises in financial affairs, but he had always been able to take some course, even if it was a mistaken one. It had been reserved for Dorothea to checkmate him in such a way that he could not ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... "Why, it's just checkmate, and the game is up," replied Uncle John amiably. "We've decided not to hold the proposed dance, but to take our departure ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... in where angels fear to tread, Mr. Van Bibber, to show me the error of my ways. I suppose I ought to thank you for it; but I have always said that it is not the wicked people who are to be feared in this world, or who do the most harm. We know them; we can prepare for them, and checkmate them. It is the well-meaning fool who makes all the trouble. For no one knows him until he discloses himself, and the mischief is done before he can be stopped. I think, if you will allow me to say so, that you have demonstrated my theory pretty thoroughly and have done about as ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... and sailors were to take two days' provisions. I had determined to push straight for the Bari islands, south of Regif hill. Should I be able to procure the supply of corn that I expected, it would at once checkmate the conspiracy. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... in a passion. 'And mind you, Thomasson,' she continued fiercely, 'you have got to side with me now! Cross me, and you shall have neither the living nor my good word; and without my word you may whistle for your sucking lord! But do my bidding, help me to checkmate this baggage, and I'll see you have both. Why, man, rather than let him marry her, I'd pay you to marry her! I'd rather pay down a couple of thousand pounds, and the living too. D'ye hear me? But it won't come to that ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... It's a difficult task to pursue a game to a perfect conclusion amid the distractions of war, but soon I shall checkmate you in the brilliant fashion in which General Lee always snares and ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was!" interrupted John, without looking up. "How precisely he knew my feelings toward any one who would show me how to escape this checkmate!" And Lilian sprang to her feet, upsetting her workbasket, and ran to him and commenced talking hurriedly, while Mr. Reyburn, whose eyes had been resting on her face for some time, kept on singing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... was simple enough to take the law into his own hands, to thrash him publicly, to make Monte Carlo impossible for him. And then, suddenly, he remembered his duty. They were trusting him in Downing Street. Chance had put into his hands so many threads of this diabolical plot. It was for him to checkmate it. He was the only person who could checkmate it. This was no time for him to think of personal revenge, no time for him to brood over his own broken life. There was work still to be done—his ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Re-examination, p. 14, "He should have said, I advised the Parliament to lay no burden of government upon them whom he (this Commissioner) thinks church officers, then had he spoken true." Now let the reverend brother take heed to checkmate, and that three several ways (but let him not grow angry, as bad players use to do). For, 1. Eo ipso that he denies the institution, by his principles he denies the prudence; for he that denieth the institution, and adviseth the Parliament ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... quite so coarse as that attributed to the Scottish judge, Lord Kames, two centuries later, who on sentencing to death a man with whom he had often played chess and very frequently been beaten, added after the solemn words of doom, "And noo, Matthew, ye'll admit that's checkmate ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... for America, being renowned as a "fast" nation, has become a sort of hotbed, and seems to force humanity into early bloom. Therefore, past generations must not groan over the sprightly present, but sit in the chimney-corner and see boys and girls play the game which is too apt to end in a checkmate for one of the players. To many of the lookers-on, the new order of things was as good as a puppet-show; for, with the enthusiasm of youth, the actors performed their parts heartily, forgetting the audience in their own earnestness. Bless us! what revolutions went on under the round jackets, and ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... one chance lay in procrastination. In his despair he began to contemplate an alliance with Marufa, even if he had to take a subordinate role—which would at any rate give him his only ally, time, to help checkmate ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... fight rather than be devoured, and gave a breathing spell in which public opinion in the north rallied against the Twenty-one Demands and against the military pact with Japan. Thus it saved the independence of China. But, while it checked Japan, it did not checkmate her. She still expects with the assistance of Chang Tso Lin to make northern China her vassal. The support which foreign governments in general and the United States in particular are giving Peking is merely playing into the hands of the Japanese. The independent ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... servants of Ts'i, then buffeted between Tsin and Ts'u, finally invaded and humiliated by barbarian Wu, only to receive the final touches of charity at the hands of savage Yiieh. His first act, when he at last obtained high office, was to checkmate Ts'i, the man behind the ruler of which jealous state feared that Lu might, under Confucius' able rule, succeed in obtaining the Protectorate, and thus defeat his own insidious design to dethrone the legitimate Ts'i house. The wily Marquess ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... that Mr. Chamberlain and his noble colleagues had anything but beds of roses whilst pursuing the diplomacy adopted to checkmate the Bond. They had to gain national support without divulging their own proceeding, and were at the same time reduced to a situation which imposed a spartan fortitude in concealing and repressing involuntary perturbation in the presence of an impending national crisis, and also ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... fool's crime is the crime that is found out, and the wise man's crime is the crime that is NOT found out. If I could give you an instance, it would not be the instance of a wise man. Dear Lady Glyde, your sound English common sense has been too much for me. It is checkmate for me ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... West, Daniel Butterfield in the East personally laid out every detail of this great service, so as to checkmate the Southern design, were the Mississippi given over to ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... replied Henry Ware; "but Braxton is sure that something is wrong, and so is that cunning wolf, Yellow Panther. They want to hold us here in the village until they find out the truth; but we are willing to stay, that we may checkmate what they do. I can work on old Gray Beaver, whose age makes him favor ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... his fellow-men, by the supremacy of intellectual power, and remorseless cruelty. And he was what? A baffled trickster, whose every move upon the great chessboard had been a separate mistake, leading step by step to the irrevocable sentence—checkmate! ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... ordinary chess puzzle with which we are familiar in the press (dignified, for some reason, with the name "problem") has a vital connection with the game of chess itself. But there is no condition in the game that you shall checkmate your opponent in two moves, in three moves, or in four moves, while the majority of the positions given in these puzzles are such that one player would have so great a superiority in pieces that the other ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... Dr. Upround said, as soon as he had well considered this epistle, "I have put up with many a checkmate at your hands, but not without the fair delight of a counter-stroke at the enemy. Here you afford me none of that. You are my master in every way; and quietly you make me make your moves, quite as if I were the black in a problem. You leave me to conduct your fellow-smugglers' ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... move, and met checkmate; the second move would be through Allis's mother; he determined upon that course. All his old cunning must have surely departed from him if he could not win this girl. Fate was backing him up most ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... the fleet we usually have in Chinese waters became indispensable, not merely, as before, to protect our trade and our missionaries in China, but to checkmate the Spanish fleet, which otherwise held San Francisco and the whole Pacific coast at its mercy. When war was declared our fleet was necessarily ordered out of neutral ports. Then it had to go to Manila or go home. If ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... streams and bayous through which it was proposed to pass. Want of this knowledge led the expedition on until difficulties were encountered, and then it would become necessary to send back to Young's Point for the means of removing them. This gave the enemy time to move forces to effectually checkmate further (p. 378) progress, and the expedition was withdrawn when within a few hundred yards of free and open navigation ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... reaching Havre, two weeks later, to discover which direction they had taken? Suppose they had gone to Paris, as seemed most probable, how could I ever hope to find them there? Even if I did find them, would I be in time to checkmate Martigny? ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... his whole force against McPherson, the latter will have his bridge at Larkin's, and the route to Chattanooga via Willa's Valley and the Chattanooga Creek, open for retreat; and if Johnston attempt to leave Dalton, Thomas will have force enough to push on through Dalton to Kingston, which will checkmate him. My own opinion is that Johnston will be compelled to hang to his railroad, the only possible avenue of supply to his army, estimated at from ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... whose game was over, and who had just given an emphatic checkmate to her enemy, strolled across the room. She stood near the piano and could overhear the two; Kitty's eyes met hers, and ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... possible profit to the contractors; and Jost, with his newspaper influence, would have satisfied the public mind by printing constant reiterations of the completeness and excellence of the supplies, and the entire contentment and jubilation of the men! But I awoke to my responsibilities in time to checkmate this move. I forbade the provocation intended;—I stopped the war. In this matter at least—much loss of life, much heavy expenditure, and much ill-will among other nations has been happily spared to us. For the rest,—everything ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... was coming to. Sir Walter says this thing is about as important for our cause as big guns. He can't give me orders, but he offers the job of going out to find what the mischief is. Once he knows that, he says he can checkmate it. But it's got to be found out soon, for the mine may be sprung at any moment. I've taken on the job. Will ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... well at ease, I thank it God, as after mine estate, Right young, and stand untied in *lusty leas,* *pleasant leash Withoute jealousy, or such debate: (of love)* Shall none husband say to me checkmate; For either they be full of jealousy, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... made ready to follow Anderson with all haste in his own machine. Rosalie hurriedly perfected preparations to accompany him. She was rejoining the house party that day, was consumed by excitement over the situation, and just as eager as Bonner to checkmate the untimely operations of poor ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... Look heah.' He bent forward quite romantically. 'I'm going to be perfectly frank. Of course yah know that when I came on board this ship I came—to checkmate yah.' ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... rage of Murray Bradshaw at being interrupted just at the moment when he was, as he thought, about to cry checkmate and finish the first great game he had ever played may well be imagined. But it could not be helped. Myrtle had exercised the customary privilege of young ladies at parties, and had turned from talking with one to talking with another,—that was all. Fortunately, ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... be Even that my admirals fail to keep the tryst— A thing scarce thinkable, when all's reviewed— I strike this seaside camp, cross Germany, With these two hundred thousand seasoned men, And pause not till within Vienna's walls I cry checkmate. Next, Venice, too, being taken, And Austria's other holdings down that way, The Bourbons also driven from Italy, I strike at Russia—each in turn, you note, Ere they can act conjoined. Report to me What has been scanned to-day upon the main, And on your passage down ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... at first reasonable opinion in Germany openly condemned. Simultaneously the German Government set in motion an avalanche of racial feeling to play off against the just and moderate measures taken by other powers to checkmate Austrian aggression. In addition to the racial hostility, which had been lashed into bitterness during the spring of 1914, came Germany's morbid conception of national and personal honour. Lastly the ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... went, and they advanced up the left bank of the Seine—their object being, to cross the river at Rouen and then march on to Calais, where they were to be joined by an army of Flemish archers. But their plans received a sudden checkmate. ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... a check, almost a checkmate, and for a time Polly quite shook with fury, but after a little she sufficiently recovered herself to reflect that the reins of authority had not yet been absolutely placed in her hands, and it might be wisest for her to ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... of conversation depends on how much you can take for granted. Vulgar chess-players have to play their game out; nothing short of the brutality of an actual checkmate satisfies their dull apprehensions. But look at two masters of that noble game! White stands well enough, so far as you can see; but Red says, Mate in six moves;—White looks,—nods;—the game is over. Just so in talking with first-rate men; especially ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Halarkenden said, and held out the thick envelope; and then did an extraordinary thing for Robert Halarkenden. He looked at the address in the unmistakable, big, black writing and looked at the girl and stood a moment, with a question in his eyes. The girl flushed. "Checkmate in six moves" was quite enough to say to this girl; one did not have to play the game ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... of action, Ella's simple outburst and even Ranelagh's unexpected and somewhat startling suggestion lost much of their significance. All his mind and heart were on his next move. It was to be made with the queen, and must threaten checkmate. Yet he did not forget the two pawns, silent in their places—but guarding certain squares which the queen, for all her royal prerogatives, might not ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... going to meet anyone tonight I'd better be near to the place of meeting. I might hear something that would teach me just what to do to checkmate ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... wouldst my wit checkmate, Making my wage as wrong appear; Thou say'st that I am come too late, Of so large hire to be worthy here; Yet sawest thou ever small or great, Living in prayer and holy fear, Who did not forfeit at some date The meed of heaven to merit clear? Nay much the rather, year by ...
— The Pearl • Sophie Jewett
... was himself in Roscoff bargaining for the freight. But we had all learnt confidence in him by this time—his increasing bodily weakness never seemed to affect his cleverness and resource—and no doubt occurred to me that he would contrive to checkmate this new move of the riding-officer's. Nevertheless, and partly I dare say out of curiosity, to have a good look at the soldiers, I slipped on my clothes and hurried downstairs and across ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... plain. The Government declined to accept as a vote of want of confidence in them a majority which was obtained by so dishonest and treacherous a combination as men voting together who were at such opposite poles of thought; and the Government would just checkmate the little game by accepting the 103 members as what the House preferred to the Government ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor |
