"Chess" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the second place to retain the recollection of the slight peculiarities characterising each for several years, would seem altogether incredible, had we not other instances—such as Bidder's and Colburn's calculating feats, Morphy's blindfold chess-play, etc.—of the amazing degree in which one brain may surpass all others in some special quality, though perhaps, in other respects, not exceptionally powerful, or even ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... of myself when I get back to blue, as I do in chess, after I have played a long while with the black, changing to white. I manoeuvre for some time for the discarded color," Jack said, ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... steady public most 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 ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... Henry's History of Great Britain. A Game at Chess. Of Monachism and Chivalry. Dinner at Lorenzo's. Some Account of Book Collectors ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... yellow lanterns, and then great stretches of land, some light with the grain silvered by the waning moon, some dark from the plough's drastic hand, undivided by hedge or wall, yet as evenly marked out as a chess-board, reminding Jill of a very great patchwork quilt held together ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... Kashmir shawls as thin as a cobweb, embroidered with flowers of gold; jars of fine tobacco from Jamaica; carved ivory boxes full of Russian tea; an old violin with a string broken and a picture on the back; a set of big chess-men, carved out of coral and amber; a walking-stick which had a sword inside it when you pulled the handle; six wine-glasses with turquoise and silver round the rims; and a lovely great sugar-bowl, made of mother o' ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... talent of the highest order. In conception and execution it was equal to any of Napoleon's campaigns. It embraced an extent of territory, from New York to North Carolina inclusive, as extensive as the present German empire, and every movement was that of a master hand on the chess-board of war. Success without the French would have been impossible, without Greene's admirable generalship it might have been impossible, but Washington conceived and carried through to accomplishment the whole great scheme which resulted in a final and ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... in our time; the silence of contemporaries, although not friendly to him, proves that he was not in that century so accused." [Footnote: Gino Capponi, Storia delta Republica di Firenze, lib. vi. chap. ii.] The only mention of anything of artistic value is a "tavoliere" [Footnote: A chess or draught board.] of rich work, spoken of by Burlamacchi and Benivieni, in a "Canzone di un Piagnone sul bruciamento delle Vanita." Savonarola himself was an artist and musician in early life, the love of the beautiful was strong ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... The 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 ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... very popular writer, and lectured on astronomical subjects in this country, and in England and her colonies. A memorial teaching observatory is erected in his honor near San Diego, Cal. He was a man of untiring industry, an athlete, a musician, and a chess-player. His books are numerous. Among them are "Half Hours with the Telescope," "Other Worlds than Ours," "Light Science for Leisure Hours," "The Expanse of Heaven," "The Moon," "The Borderland of Science," "Our Place Among Infinites," "Myths and Marvels of Astronomy," "The Universe of Suns," ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... Third, the Collegiate Ladies, All which, he moves, afterwards, in by-walks or under-plots, as diversions to the main Design, least it grow tedious: though they are still naturally joined with it; and, somewhere or other, subservient to it. Thus, like a skilful chess player, by little and little, he draws out his men; and makes his pawns of ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... that there is a great similarity between the late Moltke and Heeringen. They have the same aquiline features, tall, thin, dried-up body, the same taciturn disposition, even to their hobbies—Moltke being an incessant chess player, Heeringen using every one of his spare moments to play with lead soldiers. He is reputed to have an army of 30,000 lead soldiers with which he plays the moment he opens his eyes—much in the ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... that 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 ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... was bounded by double gates of wood and iron that were always shut; and on each hither side of these rose an oblong dwelling of red brick, two stories high, and capable of accommodating thirty boys, sleeping or waking, at work or rest or play; for in bad weather we played indoors, or tried to, chess, draughts, backgammon, and the like—even blind-man's-buff (Colin Maillard)—even puss in ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... creature as a fact or a thing, but not as an existence like his 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 ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... all trained to dress themselves at the earliest possible age, to make their own beds,—the boys as well as the girls,—to take care of their clothes, to eat what was given them, and to keep out of the way. Mrs. Kronborg would have made a good chess player; she had a head for moves ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... 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 the time are ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... attempt on Cornish's life which she herself had frustrated. He seemed to know nothing of the grim and silent antagonism that existed between the two men, shutting his eyes to their movements, which were like the movements of chess-players that the onlooker sees but does not understand. Dorothy knew that Von Holzen was infinitely cleverer than her brother. She knew, indeed, that he was cleverer than most men. With the quickness of her sex, she had long ago divined the source and basis of his strength. ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... he had just remembered the gold cloak, gold chess-board, and bright gold piece that the King had lost ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... "I find that I have time on my hands. Would it be too much to ask you to have a game of chess with me now?" ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... of evening? And Oliver was considering why, when if as he pressed the bell, he had felt so much like a modern St. George and wholly as if he were doing something rather fine and perilous, he should feel quite so much like a gauche seventeen-year-old now. He thought that he would not enjoy playing chess with Mrs. Severance. She was one of those people who smiled inoffensively at the end of a game and then said they thought it would really be a little evener if they gave ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... make it stay quiet, dusted the carriage, arranged his hair, remoulded his hat, encouraged his moustache, and in rather less than a quarter of a minute was ready to conduct her. Italians are born knowing the way. It would seem that the whole earth lay before them, not as a map, but as a chess-board, whereon they continually behold the changing pieces as well as the squares. Any one can find places, but the finding of people ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... enemy's fleet 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, and was sometimes heard ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... rivals, Prof. von Possenfeller and Dr. Smithlawn were devoted personal friends. They called each other Possy and Smithy and got together once a week to play chess and exchange views on the universe in general. Only one subject was taboo between them—their ...
— When I Grow Up • Richard E. Lowe
... my attention by his popularity among the other men and by his peculiar talks of women. His name was Max Margolis. We used to speak of him as Big Max to distinguish him from a Little Max, till one day a peddler who was a good chess-player and was then studying algebra changed the two names to "Maximum Max" and "Minimum Max," which the other peddlers pronounced "Maxie Max" and ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... grove, although much nearer the house than before. The reason soon became apparent. On that ridge, and within the gloomy shadows of the trees, were officers as coolly observant as if playing a game of chess. They gave no more heed to the terrific peals of thunder than they would have done to so many Chinese gongs. While watching the attack upon his centre and providing against it, General Marston was also seeking to penetrate, by means of a powerful ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... her up till they were several hundred feet above the earth and the keen air stung their cheeks. Then she led him still higher, till the meadows looked like the squares on a chess-board and the trees were like little toy shrubs. Here they rushed along at a tremendous speed, too fast to speak, their wings churning the air into little whirlwinds and eddies as they passed, whizzing, ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... stranger in mortal experience. The man was confounded. At the game of Chess it is the dishonour of our adversary when we are stale-mated: but in life, combatting the world, such a winning of the game ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Lord Cairnforth sat silent and melancholy. His cousin good-naturedly tried to rouse him into the usual contest at chess with which they had begun to while away the long winter evenings, and which just suited Lord Cairnforth's acute, accurate, and introspective brain, accustomed to plan and to order, so that he delighted in the game, and was soon as good a player as his teacher. But now his mind was disturbed ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... sick and wounded and prisoners were brought on board. At ten on the 25th, his ship, the Richard, sank. Played chess with Mr. Merry, one of the enemy's midshipmen. Beat him ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... pause. Lady Margaret had sat down to chess with the Spaniard. No look was upon the lovers: their eyes met, and with that one glance the whole current of their thoughts was changed. The blood, which a moment before had left Falkland's cheek so colourless, rushed back to it again. The love which had so penetrated ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Keytel are having a game of chess. The former is much better than he was, but has still to lead an invalid life. Some nights he gets but little sleep on account of rain, and has to pace up and down a ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... high. The hurricane, like an executioner hastening to his victim, began to dismember the craft. There came, in the twinkling of an eye, a dreadful crash: the top-sails were blown from the bolt-ropes, the chess-trees were hewn asunder, the deck was swept clear, the shrouds were carried away, the mast went by the board, all the lumber of the wreck was flying in shivers. The main shrouds gave out although they were turned in, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... their meals in common, riding, hunting, hawking, playing at bowls, tennis, or stool-ball, or any other pastime, in such parties as suited their inclinations; and spending the evening in the great hall, in conversation varied by chess, dice, and cards, recitals of romance, and music, sometimes performed by the choristers of the Royal chapel, or sometimes by the company themselves, and often by one or other of the two kings, who were both proficients as well with the voice as ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... King was very fond of retiring from the business of State, which ever rested more and more heavily upon his shoulders, sometimes to squander in quietness a spare hour or two; sometimes to idle over a favorite book; sometimes to play a game of chess with a favorite courtier. The cold painted walls had been hung with tapestry, and its floor had been spread with arras carpet. These and the cushioned couches and chairs that stood around gave its gloomy antiquity an air of comfort—an air ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... his life, which were discovered by Gouvernail, who in consequence fled with the boy to the court of the king of France, where Tristram was kindly received, and grew up improving in every gallant and knightly accomplishment, adding to his skill in arms the arts of music and of chess. In particular, he devoted himself to the chase and to all woodland sports, so that he became distinguished above all other chevaliers of the court for his knowledge of all that relates to hunting. No wonder that Belinda, the ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... Children. Paris. Venus and Cupid. Rome. Villa Borghese: Toilet of Minerva. Venice. Academy: The Marriage of Cana; Madonna in Glory; Vanity, Orpheus, and Eurydice; Rape of Proserpine; Virgin in Glory. Verona. Man and Woman playing Chess; Triumph of Bacchus. Vienna. Woman taken in Adultery; ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... girl did not such a thing, that I back at any odds for crossing the Cordilleras. I would bet you something now, reader, if I thought you would deposit your stakes by return of post, (as they play at chess through the post-office,) that Kate does the trick, that she gets down to the other side; that the soldiers do not: and that the horse, if preserved at all, is preserved in a way that will leave him very ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... open 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
... the earmarks of each particular member of this children's group. It may be said in advance that the "openings" of all of them (as chess-players call the first moves) are very much alike. All of them are apt to begin with a little redness and itching of the mucous membranes of the nose, the throat, and the eyes, with consequent snuffling and blinking ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... I shall get my money," said Tamada, and something looked out of his eyes that betrayed a purpose already gained, Rainey fancied, as a chess player might gain assurance of victory by the looking ahead to all conceivable moves against him, and providing a counter-play that would achieve the game. It was borne in upon him that Tamada had resources he could not ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... circumstances of life that trouble or weigh upon us, it is the way we take them. If a man is playing a difficult game of chess, the more intricate the moves the more thoughtfully he looks over his own and his opponent's men, and the more fully he is aroused to make the right move toward a checkmate. If, when the game became difficult, the player stopped ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... the men were allowed to amuse themselves with games of various kinds, as well as dancing and singing, until nine o'clock, when they had to turn in, and all lights were extinguished. The officers employed their evenings in reading and writing, with an occasional game of chess, or a tune on the flute or violin, until ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... I be in fault? I am sure where hearts are so few, It is difficult to discern The diamonds of paste from the true; I thought him like all the rest, Skilful in playing his part; As careful at cards or at chess, As winning a ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... kings; the site of a fosse commune attests the valor of republican martyrs; the Champs Elysees are the popular earthly fields of a French paradise. One cafe is famed for the beauty of its mistress, another for the great chess-players who make it a resort; one is the daily rendezvous of the liberals, another of royalists, one of military men, another of artists; they flourish and fade with dynasties, and are respectively the favorites of provincials and citizens, gourmands and traders, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... fought at Muehlberg on the Elbe, April 24, 1547. It proved to be a crushing defeat for the Protestants. The Elector himself was taken captive, treated as a rebel, and sentenced to death. The sentence was read to him while he was playing chess with his fellow-captive, Duke Ernest of Lueneburg. John Frederick answered, he did not believe that the Emperor would deal so severely with him; if, however, he were in earnest, they should let him know that he ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... an ordinary room; and a cast-iron door, six feet in height, shutting with a rubber-lined flange, so that all its joints are as air-tight as the rest of the box. Inside of the box, in the centre, stands a table, suitable for reading, writing, draughts, cards, chess, or games of any similiar kind, with comfortable chairs arranged around it corresponding in number to the people who for an hour or two could comfortably occupy the room. In one side of the box is a circular ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... humorous and yet clear account we have before us, now, of the Thiers game! We have traced Guizot through every day with the utmost distinctness, and see him perfectly in the sick-room. Now, here is Thiers, playing with his chess-men, Jesuits, &c. A hundred clumsy English or American papers could not make the present crisis in Paris so clear as we see it in the ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... of the shortest sort An ignorance that knowledge creates and begets Ashamed to lay out as much thought and study upon it Can neither keep nor enjoy anything with a good grace Change of fashions Chess: this idle and childish game Death is terrible to Cicero, coveted by Cato Death of old age the most rare and very seldom seen Diogenes, esteeming us no better than flies or bladders Do not to pray that all things may go as we would have them Excel above the common rate ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger
... where they eat, where they entertain each other either with music or discourse. They do not so much as know dice, or any such foolish and mischievous games. They have, however, two sorts of games not unlike our chess; the one is between several numbers, in which one number, as it were, consumes another; the other resembles a battle between the virtues and the vices, in which the enmity in the vices among themselves, and their agreement against virtue, is not unpleasantly represented; together with ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... Ealer—dead now, these many, many years. I steered 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 just casually, but by the hour, when it was ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... 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
... were manned by a dilapidated set of lead soldiers—the earliest treasures of Sam's boyhood, which had been sent to him from home at his request. Sam did not lift his eyes from the table, and moved the men about with his hand as if he were playing a game of chess. ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... insignificant sum of ten cents has enabled this progressive young man to learn for himself that the celestial beings enjoy themselves pretty much as we do in this world. I venture to say that there is not a man in this crowd who ever knew before that the inhabitants of Saturn knew anything about chess or cigars." ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... to the children, teaching the boys, of whom they had three, to ride, fence, toss the pike, and many similar exercises; and, above all, filling up a great blank in her father's existence, with whom he played at chess and backgammon, or read Shakspeare, or was clerk to prayers when any sequestrated divine ventured to read the service of the Church. Or he found game for him while the old gentleman continued to go a-sporting; and, especially he talked over the storming ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... delving into the treasure on our own account, and brought to light a brace of antiquated pistols, an old silver flagon, a compass, a wonderful set of chess men carved from ivory, and some curious shells, that delighted The Seraph. And other quaint things there were that we handled reverently, and coins of different countries, square and round, and some with ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... and Uncle Richard were playing chess. Morten, Fanny, and Rachel were talking of to-morrow's ball, and they every now and then addressed themselves to Miss Cordsen, who was sitting by the ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... been a golden florin. He loved to strengthen his family by a good alliance, and went home with a triumphant light in his eyes after concluding a satisfactory marriage for his son or daughter under his favourite loggia in the evening cool; he loved his game at chess under that same loggia, and his biting jest, and even his coarse joke, as not beneath the dignity of a man eligible for the highest magistracy. He had gained an insight into all sorts of affairs at home and abroad: ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... provisional defective marriage law a Utopia may be conceived as existing and studying to perfect itself, but without rulers a Utopia is impossible though the theory of its matrimony be complete. And the difficulty in this question is not simply the difficulty of a complicated chess problem, for example, in which the whole tangle of considerations does at least lie in one plane, but a series of problems upon different levels and ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... common ruin half the small investors in the country. Left penniless, he changes his disgraced name and goes out to Canada to make good. There, on the prairies, he puts in some hard honest work. But, in his haste to be rich, the Black Knight, as they do in chess, after moving straight, moved obliquely. In order to make a coup out of a Wall Street cinch he helped himself to the money of the bank of which he was cashier. Other people who shall be nameless have done this sort of thing before, and, after returning the "borrowed" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various
... here. Suppose we play a game of chess. If you win, the souls shall be yours. There are lot which I should like to see crossed off the revision list. Hi, Porphyri! Bring me ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... 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
... 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 her. Usually she ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... real murder mystery, and astounded Dickens by outlining the entire plot of "Barnaby Rudge" when only a few of the first chapters had been published; if he wrote imaginatively of science, he in fact demonstrated in "Maelzel's Chess Player" that a pretended automaton was operated by a man. "Hop Frog" and "The Cask of Amontillado" are old-world stories of revenge. "The Island of the Fay" and "The Domain of Arnheim" are landscape studies, the one of calm loveliness, the other of Oriental profusion and coloring. "Shadow" and "Silence" ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... them in what manner they should go out against this great power of the Moors. And when they had taken counsel the Cid went to sleep upon his seat, and the Infantes and the others sate playing at tables and chess. Now at this time the men who were keepers of the lion were cleaning the court, and when they heard the cry that the Moors were coming, they opened the den, and came down into the palace where the Cid was, and left the door of the court open. And when the lion had ate his meat and saw that the door ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... the right a ribbon of river, blue-green save where the rapids churned it white, and along its edge a fringe of leafy cottonwoods; at vast intervals square black plots of plowed land like sections on a chess-board of the gods, and farm buildings cut so clear in the mountain atmosphere that the sense of space was lost and they seemed like child-houses ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... The cardinal, convinced by the affair of the Vidame de Chartres, that 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 ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... chess-players open every game with established gambits, they opened with a thrust and parry, orthodox and even frankly ineffectual. But in MacIan's soul more formless storms were gathering, and he made a lunge or two so savage as ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... round about with a margin of green downs. They were large enough to have the charm of vague, indefinite extension, and yet all could be distinctly seen. Large squares of green corn that was absorbing its yellow from the sunlight; chess squares, irregularly placed, of brown furrows; others of rich blood-red trifolium; others of scarlet sainfoin and blue lucerne, gardens of scarlet poppies here and there. Not all of these, of course, at once, but they followed so quickly in the summer days that ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... only with every mark of humility. His dress, which he often changed, was sometimes made of vicuna wool, sometimes of bats' skins, sleek as velvet. Nothing which he had worn could be used by another; when he laid it aside it was burned. To while away the time the Spaniards taught him to play chess, at which he became expert, spending upon it many of the tedious hours of his imprisonment. Soon after the return of Hernando Pizarro the three cavaliers came back from Cuzco. They had travelled six hundred miles in the greatest luxury, ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... Imbize, who had formerly been his friend, nor the imprisoned nobles, who had ever been his implacable enemies, was resolved to make himself safe in one quarter at least, before he set forth against the Malcontents. Accordingly, Hessels and Visch, as they sat together in their prison, at chess, upon the 4th of October, 1578, were suddenly summoned to leave the house, and to enter a carriage which stood at the door. A force of armed men brought the order, and were sufficiently strong to enforce it. The prisoners obeyed, and the coach ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... chandeliers the passengers are drawing together in groups, and coteries; some to converse, others to play ecarte or vingt-un; here and there a solitary individual burying himself in a book; or a pair, almost as unsocial, engaging in the selfish duality of chess. ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... 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, he had learned the art ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... central points of the national character in the comic exhibition, by the external peculiarities of speech, dress, &c. Their constant recurrence does not by any means preclude the greatest possible diversity in the plot of the pieces, even as in chess, with a small number of men, of which each has his fixed movement, an endless number of combinations is possible. But as to extemporary playing, it no doubt readily degenerates into insipidity; and this may have been the case even in ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... means," I replied, going to a corner cupboard, in which we kept miscellaneous articles, and bringing out the chess-board. ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... put an end to the walks to meet Gilbert, but only so as to make Albinia feel responsible for him all day long, and uneasy whenever he was not accounted for. She played chess with him, found books, and racked her brains to seek amusements for him; but knowing all the time that it was hopeless to expect a boy of fourteen to be satisfied with them. One or two boys of his age had come home for the holidays, and she tried to be relieved by being ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Rooms, frescoed with illustrations of Goethe, Schiller, and Wieland; there is the room where Goethe and the Grand-Duke used to play chess together; there is the conservatory opening from it where they liked to sit and chat; everywhere in the pictures and sculptures, the engraving and intaglios, are the witnesses of the tastes they shared, the love they both had ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... it connected with Bensersiel too, or the country between? I searched the ordnance map again, standing up to get a better light and less jolting. There was the road northwards from Esens to Bensersiel, passing through dots and chess-board squares, the former meaning fen, the latter fields, so the reference said. Something else, too, immediately caught my eye, and that was a stream running to Bensersiel. I knew it at once for the muddy stream or ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... preserve your majesty!" said Gardiner as he entered, to the king, who just then was sitting with the queen at the chess-board. With frowning brow and compressed lips he looked over the game, which stood unfavorable for him, and threatened him ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... in the midst of which he left the table to expectorate in the fireplace. He lost the game and said to one of the party, "Young gentleman, do you know why I lost that game?" "No, sir," was the response. "It was because I got up to spit." Scott was also a good chess player. ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... not get to sleep: he never felt more wakeful in his life; so he lit the lamp and got out the chess-board, and played himself a game of chess. But even that did not enliven him: it seemed slow somehow; so he gave chess up and tried to read. He did not seem able to take any sort of interest in reading either, so he put on his coat again and went ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... Interchange — N. interchange, exchange; commutation, permutation, intermutation; reciprocation, transposition, rearrangement; shuffling; alternation, reciprocity; castling (at chess); hocus-pocus. interchangeableness^, interchangeability. recombination; combination &c 48. barter &c 794; tit for tat &c (retaliation) 718; cross fire, battledore and shuttlecock; quid pro quo. V. interchange, exchange, counterchange^; bandy, transpose, shuffle, change bands, swap, permute, reciprocate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... great complaint is that he has been kept ill-informed of the progress of events. He has simply been a pawn on the chess-board, or a cog in the great wheel. And he laments that often at the end of a long day's march or fighting he lies down to rest in his wet ragged clothes, not knowing where he is or whether he ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... man mainly for his primary relations with truth, as I understand truth,—not for any secondary artifice in handling his ideas. Some of the sharpest men in argument are notoriously unsound in judgment. I should not trust the counsel of a smart debater, any more than that of a good chess-player. Either may of course advise wisely, but not necessarily because ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... carefully locking both gates behind them, and walked back to the office. Once there, Hanlon said, "I see you have a chess set, sir. Do you play? I ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... 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 ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... into the kitchen again, leaving our tutors playing at chess, which Mr Clare was trying to teach Captain Mugford. That kitchen was a favourite resort of ours in the evenings, and Clump and Juno liked to have us there. There was a famous fire—three or four fresh logs singing over a red mass of coal; plenty of ashes; and a whistled tune with a jet of ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... chess-men, standing on the same squares of the chess-board where we left them, we say they are all in the SAME place, or unmoved, though perhaps the chessboard hath been in the mean time carried out of one room into another; ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... came in at midnight he found his wife and his old friend Willoughby Crane playing chess ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... literature, the bone and sinew of the nation finding their requirements catered for; hundreds of columns will be occupied with interesting details of the world's doings, such as water-spouts, elopements, conflagrations, and public entertainments; there is a corner for politics, ladies' work, chess, religion, and even literature; and a few spicy editorials serve to direct the course of public thought. It is difficult to estimate the part played by such enormous and miscellaneous repositories in the education ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... in ancient centuries—I don't remember which—but they always 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, ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... Gratis as usual. Contains works on Archaeology, Antiquities, Botany, Coins, Chess, Freemasonry, Geology and Mineralogy, Heraldry, Irish Topography, Old Plays, Phrenology, Theatres, and Dramatic History, Wales, its History, &c., with an extensive assortment of Books in other departments of Literature, equally scarce, curious, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 37. Saturday, July 13, 1850 • Various
... obeyed with alacrity. The drawer (it belonged to a sandalwood table, inlaid with chess-squares of pearl and malachite), being opened, proved to contain burnt almonds in an ivory box, and a silver saucer full of cubes of fig-paste, red and white. Tommy Candy seemed to find words unequal to the situation; he gave Mrs. Tree ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... women will say: We could have done no worse than these chess players of Europe and we might have done better. Assuredly if we grasp and hold the reins of the world there will never be another war. We are not, in the first place, as greedy as men; we will divide the world up in strict accordance with race, and let every nation have its own place in the ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... final resolution of the Scottish nation to surrender him, was brought to the king; and he happened, at that very time, to be playing at chess.[**] Such command of temper did he possess, that he continued his game without interruption; and none of the bystanders could perceive that the letter which he perused had brought him news of any consequence. The English commissioners, who, some days after, came to take him ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... came on by degrees. I used to think of how things might be different; that was the way it began. I tried to work out schemes of life in my head, as I would do a game of chess; not schemes of life for myself, you know, but such as should save other people from being very miserable. I wanted to do some good in the world,"—she paused here to choose her words—"and that kind of thought naturally resolves itself into action, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... artillery, falling back on their centre, and stationing their cannon, which our gunners had begun to dismount, higher up the hill. But the remainder of their line did not change; they had squares of red and squares of black touching each other at the corners like the squares of a chess-board, in the rear of the deep road; and in attacking them we would come under their crossfire. Their artillery was in position on the brow of the hill, and in the hollow on the hill-side toward Mont-St.-Jean their cavalry ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... ever been 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 snow-capped Alp; whose inhabitants recall the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... all a matter of minutes, but long enough for the wind and rain to have gathered force, and while the former raved and shrieked, down came the latter in a sheet, or rather in a succession of sheets which made the roadways seem as if full of dancing chess pawns, and the gullies turn at once into so many furious little torrents tearing down the slopes towards ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... larger issues which are said to lie behind it. Yet that is whither the nations are blindly drifting Who, then, makes war? The answer is to be found in the Chancelleries of Europe, among the men who have too long played with human lives as pawns in a game of chess, who have become so enmeshed in formulas and the jargon of diplomacy that they have ceased to be conscious of the poignant realities with which they trifle. And thus will war continue to be made, until the great masses who are the sport of professional schemers and dreamers say the ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... cut-steel buttons. Wing himself was a dapper little man, a capitalist by necessity only, for his money had been left to him. His one ambition was to collect all the literature in all languages on the game of chess; a game by the way which he himself did not play. "Mr. Wing had gone out to lunch about an hour before," said the boy in buttons. "Would Mr. West wait?" Harvey, who knew Mr. Wing's luncheons of old, said no, but he would call again in the afternoon. As he walked ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... we did, in the righteousness of their cause. But like the dead bodies of the Frenchmen and the Englishmen who lay quite close, they had been done to death by the villainy of statecraft and statesmen, playing one race against another as we play with pawns in a game of chess. The old witchcraft was better than this new witchcraft, and not so fraudulent in its power of ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... long gun, the butt-end 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 ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... two or four months ahead, turns out correct, almost on the day named, and precisely on the spot designated.[1160] Add to this one other faculty, and the rarest of all. For, if things turn out as he foresaw they would, it is because, as with great chess-players, he has accurately measured not alone the mechanical moves of the pieces, but the character and talent of his adversary, "sounded his draft of water," and divined his probable mistakes. He has added the calculation of physical quantities and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... It was like a game of chess, both opponents well matched. Uncle Felix was too big to be caught napping by clever questions that hid traps. The children felt the danger in the air, and watched their uncle with quivering admiration. Only their uncle ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... say, may not have been that woman's, and if it was, she had not then bedevilled him. He was too sheepish to demand it back from his mother, and already he cared for it too much to laugh at Jess's theft with Leeby. So it was that a curious game at chess was played with the glove, ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... 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 ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf |
