But there
came a day when a friend and I lunched at a restaurant in which
chess-boards formed as permanent a part the furniture of the
dining tables as the salt and mustard. Partly in joke, because it
seemed to be the etiquette of the building, we started a game. We
stayed there two hours ... and the fever remained with me for two
months. Another year or so of normal development followed. Then I
caught influenza and spent dull days in bed. Nothing can be worse
for an influenza victim than chess, but I suppose my warders did
not realize how much I suffered under the game. Anyhow, I played
it all day and dreamed of it all night--a riot of games in which
all the people I knew moved diagonally and up and down, took each
other, and became queens.
And now I have played again, and am once more an enthusiast. You
will agree with me, will you not, that it is a splendid game?
People mock at it. They say that it is not such good exercise as
cricket or golf. How wrong they are. That it brings the same
muscles into play as does cricket I do not claim for it. Each
game develops a different set of sinews; but what chess-player
who has sat with an extended forefinger on the head of his queen
for five minutes, before observing the enemy's bishop in the
distance and bringing back his piece to safety--what chess-
player, I say, will deny that the muscles of the hand ridge up
like lumps of iron after a month at the best of games? What
chess-player who has stretched his arm out in order to open with
the Ruy Lopez gambit, who has then withdrawn it as the
possibilities of the Don Quixote occur to him, and who has
finally, after another forward and backward movement, decided to
rely upon the bishop's declined pawn--what chess-player, I ask,
will not affirm that the biceps are elevated by this noblest of
pastimes? And, finally, what chess-player, who in making too
eagerly the crowning move, has upset with his elbow the victims
of the preliminary skirmishing, so that they roll upon the floor-
-what chess-player, who has to lean down and pick them up, will
not be the better for the strain upon his diaphragm? No; say what
you will against chess, but do not mock at it for its lack of
exercise.
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