"Chess" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... solemn rows down the length of the narrow room. Three or four stout, blond girls plodded back and forth, from tables to front shop, bearing trays of cakes and steaming cups of coffee. There was a rumble and clatter of German. Every one seemed to know every one else. A game of chess was in progress at one table, and between moves each contestant would refresh himself with a long-drawn, sibilant mouthful of coffee. There was nothing about the place or its occupants to remind one of America. This dim, smoky, cake-scented ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... it seemed to him, that long and jovial supper, with the ale that ran in a continual stream, the wine that ceaselessly circled round, the jokes, and bustle, and laughter, the welcome to guests arriving; the cards, and chess, and games that succeeded it, the drinking, and drinking, and drinking, till the ladies again left; then drinking yet ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... dice.—These games, 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 word "ffristial a disiau" are here rendered by the one word "dice"—ffristial ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... loyalty and conscience instantly to set forth again. So hark ye, Master Raleigh, see thou fail not to wear thy muddy cloak, in token of penitence, till our pleasure be further known. And here," she added, giving him a jewel of gold, in the form of a chess-man, "I give thee this ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... "roc." 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 ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... girls were safe indoors; Isa working chess problems with another of the lads, Avice keeping Jane company over the putting the little ones to sleep—in Mount Lebanon, as they call the Druce lodging—and Pica preserving microscopic objects. "Isn't she awful?" said one of those pupils. "She's worse than all the dons in Cambridge. ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said, "The Prince is bored with the sameness of his chess every evening. He would like to bring literary and scientific people about the Court, vary the society, and infuse a more useful tendency into it. The Queen however has no fancy to encourage such people. This arises from a feeling on her part that her ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... is not a region of prosperous peasant farmers, nor is it a chess-board of tiny crops, the four or five acre freeholds of small owners cut up into miniature fields. I had a long talk with a countryman, and he informed me that, as in Arthur Young's time, the land belongs to large owners, and is still, ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the Register of Deeds by putting him out of the way; but I confess I do not see of what service he is going to be to me in my record. I have often found, however, that the Disposer of men and things understands much better than we do how to place his pawns and other pieces on the chess-board of life. A fish more or less in the ocean does not seem to amount to much. It is not extravagant to say that any one fish may be considered a supernumerary. But when Captain Coram's ship sprung a leak and the carpenter ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... in my barrack received a miniature billiard-table, which became immensely popular. Cards, roulette, ping-pong and chess greatly assisted in passing the time. We also had quite a good camp library, the books mostly having been received from home. I often heard it remarked that life there was one long queue, and it was not far wrong. Often one passed the morning waiting one's ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... and hear these things. To one man this world is only a gigantic farm, to be divided, and ploughed, and tilled, that it may bring forth more fruit. To another the world is merely a great market, a warehouse filled with all kinds of goods, which may be bought and sold. To some the world is like a chess-board, where each man plays a selfish game, and tries to overreach his neighbour. To others the world is a mere play-ground, where they pass a frivolous, useless existence, sitting down to eat and drink, and rising up ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... he entered the cave and thanked Wen Dschu for the severe lesson which he had given Notscha. Finally they called Notscha in to them and ordered him to be reconciled to his father. Then they dismissed them both and seated themselves to play chess. But no sooner was Notscha free than he again fell into a rage, and renewed his pursuit of his father. He had again overtaken Li Dsing when still another saint came forward to defend the latter. This time it was the old Buddha of the Radiance of the Light. When Notscha attempted to battle ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... when the drawing-room was filled with guests, who more or less preserved the decorum which etiquette demands in the presence of royalty, (the Duke of Sussex was of the party,) Charles Fox and Lady Anson, great-grandmother of the present Lord Lichfield, happened to be playing at chess. When the irascible dominie beheld them he pushed his way through the bystanders, swept the pieces from the board, and, with rigorous impartiality, denounced these impious desecrators ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... on a high hill an extraordinary chateau, something like four chess castles grouped together at the corners of a square heap of dice. It does not sound an attractive description, yet the place deserved that adjective. It was charming, and wonderfully "liveable," among its vineyards, commanding such a view as is given ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... for adequate answering, adding a suggestion of the post hypnotic recollection of these points. In process mathematics particularly, this aid had been of singular service, and it was now invariably invoked by such players of chess and games of manual dexterity as were still to be found. In fact, all operations conducted under finite rules, of a quasi-mechanical sort that is, were now systematically relieved from the wanderings of ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... brisker. We have since also made a limit, sometimes of four minutes, sometimes of five minutes, to the interval for adjustment and deliberation after one move is finished and before the next move begins. This further removes the game from the chess category, and approximates it to the likeness of active service. Most of a general's decisions, once a fight has begun, must be made in such brief intervals of time. (But we leave unlimited time at the outset ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells
... 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
... transition, hey presto! he is the intransigent priest, bitterly combating the Constitutions of Clarendon. It is true that in the Prologue the poet places one or two finger-posts—small, conventional foreshadowings of coming trouble. For instance, the game of chess between King and Chancellor ends with a ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... little angels of Heaven Each wear a long white dress, And in the tall arcadings Play ball and play at chess; ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... had married, and who should have married another man, who was coming to-night to kill him. To-night sometime the world would stop for him. He felt no longer a personal entity—he was merely part of a situation. It was as if he were a piece in a chess problem—any moment the player might move and solve the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... obliged to do the same, though he found it a frightfully tedious process. After supper, they returned as they had come to the ebony room, where he was compelled to look on while his companions played interminable games of chess, and not until he was nearly dying of weariness did they, slowly and ceremoniously as before, conduct him to his sleeping apartment. The hope of consulting the Oracle woke him very early the next morning, and his first demand was to be allowed to present himself before ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... last, and he bowed his head again and again as he spoke, evidently calculating every move in the great game of chess with live pieces in which he was about to engage. "Yes; his Excellency here will be the learned Hakim—he is a learned Hakim, and the people will crowd to his tent. I could take him and his Excellency the professor, who speaks our tongue like ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... of compassing his fell purpose, the which was to take vengeance of his brother on Alaeddin. So he entered a coffee-house in the market, a mighty fine place whither there resorted great plenty of folk, some to play tables, [629] some draughts [630] and other some chess and what not else. There he sat down and heard those who sat beside him talk of an old woman, an anchoress, by name Fatimeh, who still abode in her place without the city, serving [God], and came not down into the town but two days in the ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... making sixteen in all, each party of four dressed in garments of different colour from those worn by the others. The King and his ministers sat on the slab in the middle, and the game, which was something like chess, commenced. It must have been a glorious game: the prizes were numerous and worth playing for, and one can easily imagine the crafty old King moving his Queen so as to take the lovely slave of one of his ministers, or a handsome and fashionable young ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... Poets' 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 for Italy, and for beautiful Italian things. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of Imagination, with the sensuous objects of Nature for symbols and Faith—with Love and Pride as the unseen impetus and moving-power of all, make up the curious chess-game ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... was removed, Sir Lemuel challenged Lady Belgrade for a game of chess, and told his daughter to show Mr. Scott those chromoes of the Madonnas of Raphael which had arrived in the last parcel ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... Saturday and Sunday. Wednesday was brought on board, tel quel, a wonderful wreck; and now, Wednesday week, am a good deal picked up, but yet not quite a Samson, being still groggy afoot and vague in the head. My chess, for instance, which is usually a pretty strong game, and defies all rivalry aboard, is vacillating, devoid of resource and observation, and hitherto not covered with customary laurels. As for work, it is impossible. We shall be in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was her usual custom, issued invitations for a ball—this one in honor of the officers who had distinguished themselves in the Mexican War. Major Clayton, Bowdoin, the Murdochs, Stirlings, and Howards—all persons of the highest quality—inaugurated a series of chess tournaments, the several players and those who came to look on to be thereafter comforted with such toothsome solids as wild turkey, terrapin, and olio, and such delectable liquids as were stored in ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... let it slip, so that perhaps we may be quartered there for the next two or three years. How it will turn out I know no more than the man in the moon: a soldier is a mere machine, and is moved by his superiors just as a chessman by a chess-player. Should there be any skrimmaging, our men are in high spirits, and will, I think, soon make the Ameers put their pipes in their pockets. Ours is the first European army that has been on the Indus since the time ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... was a "fohn," that 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 the ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... was welcomed smiling once more into the parlor. Great was the rejoicing in London when Abdul Hamid's "down-and-out" performance carried his trusted friend William along. The glee changed to grief when, within a year—so quickly does the appearance of the chess-board change in "the great game"—Great Britain was once more on the doorstep, and fickle Germany was snuggling close to Young Turkey on the divan in the dimly lighted parlor. Virtuous old Britain professed to be shocked and horrified; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... moment, 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 her. Usually she ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... was one of your super chess-players, handling kings and queens, knights and prelates of flesh and blood in the game that he played with Destiny upon the dark board of Neapolitan politics. And he had no illusions on the score of the forfeit that would be claimed by his grim opponent in the event of his own defeat. ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... the lawn fete, such a steady pour that little rivers ran down the window-panes, and the porches had to be abandoned. But nobody lamented the fact that they were driven indoors. Rob and Joyce began a game of chess in the library. Lloyd and Phil turned over the music in the cabinet until they found a pile of duets which they both knew, and began to try them, first to the accompaniment of the piano, ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... bread, and was pleased to think that the next day she would double the little ordinary for him. Coffee was too dear to be a household luxury, so every day she handed him a few halfpence to have his cup, and to watch the chess-players at the Cafe de la Regence. When after a year or two she went to make her peace with her father-in-law at Langres, she wound her way round the old man's heart by her affectionate caresses, her respect, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... discovered the meaning of this word by hearing one of the natives apply it to the castle on the chess board: he used the same term when drawings of towers and castles ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... face, I will take no rent of thee whilst thou abidest therein." Ibrahim thanked him for this and the old man called another slave-girl, whereupon there came forth to him a damsel like the sun, to whom said he, "Bring chess." So she brought it and one of the servants set the cloth;[FN303] where upon said the Shaykh to Ibrahim, "Wilt thou play with me?"; and he answered, "Yes." So they played several games and Ibrahim ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... sentries went off like a startled rattlesnake. Everybody, talking idly or concentrating on writing up the day's observations, stiffened. Luis Gofredo, dozing in a chair, was on his feet instantly and crossing the hut to the instruments. His second-in-command, who had been playing chess with Willi Schallenmacher, rose and snatched his belt from the back of his chair, putting ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... more or less like a chess-board. {Scanner's comment: More correctly, it means "tiled", covered with possibly regularly shaped areas or pieces. They may or may not be square or ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... finished, the King sent for Monseigneur and Monsieur, who were already playing at 'lansquenet'; Madame, who scarcely looked at a party of 'hombre' at which she had seated herself; the Duc de Chartres, who, with a rueful visage, was playing at chess; and Mademoiselle de Blois, who had scarcely begun to appear in society, but who this evening was extraordinarily decked out, and who, as yet, knew nothing and suspected nothing; and therefore, being naturally ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... could listen to such playing as Rose's which was for that reason a double pleasure. Tom was sitting near her looking supremely peaceful. On one side of the fireplace Mrs. Craigie and Mrs. MacNaughton were playing their weekly game of chess. On the other side Raeburn had his usual Sunday evening recreation, his microscope. Erica knelt beside him, her auburn head close to his white one as they arranged their specimens or consulted books of reference. The professor, who had looked in on his way home from ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... villains looked very happy—which villains have no right to be, but often are, meseemeth—they were sitting in a niche of rock, with the lanthorn in the corner, quaffing something from glass measures, and playing at push-pin, or shepherd's chess, or basset; or some trivial game of that sort. Each was smoking a long clay pipe, quite of new London shape, I could see, for the shadow was thrown out clearly; and each would laugh from time to time, as he fancied he got the better of it. ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... back and forth to each other. The house was all open, and through the windows came a merry chatter, a few rattling notes of the piano, and something that sounded very much like a warm argument, for a game of chess was going on by one window. Out on the broad porch that ran all along the front of the house, and was shrouded with vines, stood a girl, leaning idly against the post and watching the shadows gather across the long walk. She was not a pretty girl, nor one that you would care to ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... most casual observer cannot fail to notice that China has no national game. Fencing, rowing, and cricket, are alike unknown; and archery, such as it is, claims the attention chiefly of candidates for official honours. Within doors they have chess, but it is not the game Europeans recognise by that name, nor is it even worthy of being mentioned in the same breath. There is also another game played with three hundred and sixty black and white pips on a board containing three hundred and sixty-one squares, but this is very ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... 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 ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... was unfitted alike by nature and training. He could sing romantic ditties, and accompany himself with discretion on the piano; he was a graceful although a timid cavalier; he had a pronounced taste for chess; and nature had sent him into the world with one of the most engaging exteriors ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... sequence was the same, with exasperated symptoms. Night after night passed thus, and Ginevra began to fear for her father's reason. She challenged him to play backgammon with her, but he scorned the proposal. She begged him to teach her chess, but he scouted the notion of her having wit enough to learn. She offered to read to him, entreated him to let her do something with him, but he repelled her every advance with contempt and surliness, which now and then ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... the East; but his virtues, and perhaps his faults, are less known than those of the Roman, who appears to have been much more loquacious. The Persian sage was the person who imported from India the game of chess and the fables of Pilpay. Such has been the fame of his wisdom and virtues, that the Christians claim him as a believer in the gospel; and the Mahometans revere Buzurg as a premature Mussulman. D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... of the day the rain ceased and the wind began to drop perceptibly. Von Koren had already made up his mind that he would not be able to get off that day, and had settled down to play chess with Samoylenko; but after dark the orderly announced that there were lights on the sea and that a rocket had ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Cheek vango. Cheekbone vangosto. Cheer aplauxdegi. Cheer konsoli. Cheerful gaja. Cheerfulness gajeco. Cheer up rekuragxigi. Cheese fromagxo. Chemise cxemizo. Chemist apotekisto. Chemist-shop apoteko. Chemistry hxemio. Cheque cxeko. Cherry cxerizo. Cherub kerubo. Chess-pieces sxakoj. Chess-board sxaka tabulo. Chest of drawers komodo. Chest (box) kesto. Chest brusto. Chestnut (edible) kasxtano. Chevalier kavaliro. Chew macxi. Chicane cxikani. Chicken kokido. Chicken-house kokejo. Chicory cikorio. Chide riprocxi. Chief ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... 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
... his life were shaken. He had never experienced such a feeling before. He did not think it was fear; rather it was awesomeness. For a moment he regarded life, his own life, from a new standpoint. He was only a pawn on a chess-board, one of a million of human beings, none of whom had any personality, any will. Life and death were nothing. Each had to fill his place, and to do what was allotted to him, regardless ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... a simple straightforward game played with a few well-known principles. It must be as open as a chess-board: each player should see every move of the other: and all who chose ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... and took counsel with 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 ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... maiden, and was loved in return; but he was a Protestant, she was a Catholic. The mothers and the priests bred mischief, and two hearts were broken. Why? On account of a political game of chess which Charles V and Henry VIII played together, ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... at the Academy is an old friend of mine. We occasionally hobnob over the chess board and a modest glass of wine. I hear of things beyond Round Bay and Severndale; I am interested in that gathering of young men in the Academy and often ask questions. The chaplain is deeply concerned for ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... 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 ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... 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 ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... play chess of the purser—the game had already become a passion with me. It was also my turn to dine in the ward-room, and, consequently, I was invited. The anticipated game at chess enhanced the value of the invitation. That same forenoon the captain and I had been very sociable. He gracious, and I ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... discussed subsequently with keen interest. A long ladder, which had been left in the hall, leaning against the wall, was a perfect treasure to those who most craved active exercise. They practiced all sorts of gymnastics on this ladder, and cooled the fever in their blood with fatigue. Chess finally became the standard amusement, and those who did not understand the game watched it nevertheless with as much apparent relish as if they understood it. Chess books were bought and studied as carefully as any work on tactics had ever been by the ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... amusements. There are professional dancing girls, but dancing as a social amusement is naturally regarded with disfavor. Children have various games peculiar to themselves, which are abandoned as childish things at a given age. Riddles and enigmas occupy a good deal of time among the higher classes. Chess also occupies much time, but it is much to be feared that the vice of gambling stimulated by the Chinese, who have introduced both cards and dice, is taking the ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... to depose his brother, and 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, showed him his son Ferdinand playing at chess with Miranda. ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... be fond of amusements which accord with their habits. The thoughtful game of chess, and the tranquil delight of angling, have been favourite recreations with the studious. Paley had himself painted with a rod and line in his hand; a strange characteristic for the author of "Natural Theology." Sir Henry Wotton called angling "idle time not idly spent:" we ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... to 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 ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... in no hurry. He had extraordinary patience, and he rather liked sitting back and watching the slow development of his plans. It was like chess; it was deliberate and inevitable. One made a move, and then sat back waiting and watching while the other side countered it, or fell, with slow ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 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
... gravity through a series of complicate dancing-steps with Miss Heath; begged Miss Purcell, who was longing to cry over her novel, to allow him to read for her, since he saw that she was trying her eyes, and therewith made fiasco of a page of delicious dolor; and being challenged to chess by a third, declared that was child's play, and dominoes was the game for science,—whereon, having seated a circle at that absorbing sport, he deserted for a meerschaum and the gentlemen, and in company with Captain Purcell, Mr. McLean, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... therefore, as Louis XIII had his, and these two powerful rivals vied with each other in procuring, not only from all the provinces of France, but even from all foreign states, the most celebrated swordsmen. It was not uncommon for Richelieu and Louis XIII to dispute over their evening game of chess upon the merits of their servants. Each boasted the bearing and the courage of his own people. While exclaiming loudly against duels and brawls, they excited them secretly to quarrel, deriving an immoderate satisfaction or genuine regret from the success or defeat of their own ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... day at Earlescourt, and it was nearly nine before the gentlemen, who did not sit long over their wine, came into the drawing room. The evening was somewhat chilly; a bright fire burned in the grate, and the lamps were lighted. Sir Harry sat down to his favorite game of chess with Lady Helena; Lord Earle challenged Lady Laurence to a game at ecarte. The young ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... an opinion is like moving a piece at chess it may be taken, but it forms the beginning of a game ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... and leaning against a farm gate, his eyes embraced the wild black scenery, and remembrances of the Hanley hills drifted through his thoughts. There were the same rolling wastes, and like the pieces on a chess-board the factory chimneys appeared at irregular intervals. But these topographical similarities attracted Dick only so far as they filled his mind with old memories and associations, and his thoughts ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... do wish you 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 ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... 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 spot-stroke ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... us, and sent the thrill of it into our teeth, "all this needs is Mary Pickford and a player organ to be a good film!" The only thing we saw that made us homesick was the group of firemen in front of the engine house playing checkers or chess or something. But the town had an historic interest for us as the home of the Girondists of the French Revolution; so we looked up their monument and did proper reverence to them. They were moderate idealists who rose during the first year of the revolution; we thought them much like ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... Russians and Turks were at the same old bloody and useless game—ever learning, yet never coming to a knowledge of the great truth, that, with all their fighting, nothing has been gained and nothing accomplished save a few changes of the men on the chess-board, and the loss of an incalculable amount of ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... had a beautiful programme, its debating and literary societies, its glee clubs, chess and checker circles, old sledge associations, Thespians and Greek Letter men all joining forces. The stage was a piece of earth, purple brown with pine needles. Two huge fires, one at either side, made a strong, copper-red illumination. The soldier ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... Edinburgh atmosphere; the fun that is mostly in the foreground; the work that is pushed into corners yet always gets done, though it has not the air of being important except to the excellent father whose steps on the stair are the signal for the disappearance of a chess-board into a drawer or a romance under the papers,—well-known tricks of youth which we have all been guilty of. There is a curious evidence, however, in Lockhart's Life, less known than the usual ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... estimate these cool, languid, Southwestern knights of the bungstarter, who had the manners of an Earl of Pawtucket, and who, when they disapproved of your presence, moved you with the silence and despatch of a chess ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... elegantly furnished as the private cabinet of Pelham. His cot-boy used to entertain the sailors with all manner of stories about the silver-keyed flutes and flageolets, fine oil paintings, morocco bound volumes, Chinese chess-men, gold shirt-buttons, enamelled pencil cases, extraordinary fine French boots with soles no thicker than a sheet of scented note-paper, embroidered vests, incense-burning sealing-wax, alabaster statuettes of Venus and Adonis, tortoise-shell snuff-boxes, inlaid toilet-cases, ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... his warriors to fight King Ring, the angry Frithiof was playing chess with his friend Bjorn. Hilding urged him to forget his anger and go into battle to fight for his king and his country. "The times are evil, dear foster-son," said the good Hilding, "and you ...
— Northland Heroes • Florence Holbrook
... 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
... which, in Herbert Spencer's opinion, ought to be taught in every university, is in various ways drilled into the temperament of the telephone girl. She is also taught the knack of concentration, so that she may carry the switchboard situation in her head, as a chess-player carries in his head the arrangement of the chess-men. And she is much more welcome at this strange school if she is young and has never worked in other trades, where less speed and vigilance ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... 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, ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... 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 ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... woods. The English knew how to play once, in the days of Queen Elizabeth; then they had masques and madrigals and Morris dances and music. A gentleman was ashamed if he did not speak six or seven languages, handle the sword with a deadly dexterity, play chess, and write good sonnets. Men were broken on the wheel for an idea: they were brave, cultivated, and gay; they fought, they played, and they wrote excellent verse. Now they organise games and lay claim to a special morality and to a special ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... care to take, any service to render. Mrs. Argenter did not miss her; she read a great deal, and slept a great deal, and Sylvie was rarely gone long at a time. She was always ready at twilight to play backgammon, or a game of what she called "skin-deep chess," for her mother was not able to bear the exertion or excitement of chess in real, deep earnest. Sylvie brought her sewing, also,—work for Neighbor Street it was, mostly,—into the gray parlor, and "sewed for two," on the principle of the fire-watching, that something busy ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Berlin. Portrait of Man in Black; Chess Players; Madonna and four Saints. Dresden. Apollo and Marsyas; Diana; Holy Family. Florence. Pitti: Portrait of Woman. Genoa. Brignole Sale: Portraits of Men; Santa Conversazione. Hampton Court. Madonna and Donors. London. Daphnis and Chloe; ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... boors and burghers hale Drawn round a table, o'er a board of chess, Smoking their heavy pipes, and drinking ale, Blowing ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... turned to chess, and found it a little more soothing. He soon mastered the moves and the chief gambits and commoner closing positions, and began to beat the Vicar. But then the cylindrical contours of the opposite king began to resemble Pawkins standing up and gasping ineffectually ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... 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 by ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... Shuffle-board, chess, and backgammon, with exercise and pleasant converse, will while away the intervening hours so quickly, that, if you do not keep a bright look-out, you will be surprised by the dinner-bell before you think of your toilet, which, if a luxury to you on shore, will be ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... the objects of supreme curiosity or desire, not in the lines of castle or bishop on the chess-board, but with the knight's zigzag, at first in the wrong direction, making believe to ourselves we are not after the thing coveted. Put a lump of sugar in a canary-bird's cage, and the small creature will illustrate the ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... must have a plan of operations. Napoleon said that war is like a game of chess, and that a commander must make his game. He must think it out beforehand, and in such a manner that the enemy will be compelled to play it in his way and be defeated. The general-in-chief must see the end from the beginning, just as Napoleon, sticking ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... in Agra. The red stone Fort, and Palace, and Taj, and the marble courts seem to become again alive, and full of people and colour and movement, a gallant array, and the fountains bubble, and Akbar plays living chess with his lovely wives, in colour and jewels, on ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... 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 clearest ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... 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 ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... bitter," Stanton said. "All I get is exercise. All the fun has gone out of it." He sighed and grinned. There was no point in worrying the P.T. man. "I'll just have to stick to cards and chess if I want competition. Speed and strength don't help anything if I'm holding two pair against ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... friends who go with me to theaters, etc. In the suburbs I have about half a dozen family friends. Here I meet with pleasant society and a hearty welcome. I am passionately fond of music, have an excellent piano, and can hear the best concerts in Europe. I go to all good plays. I am a good chess player. Lastly, I am an omnivorous reader. You will allow that my resources for passing ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... stage at which he looked upon his business as a means of support or of material comfort. Business had become for him an intellectual pursuit, a study in enterprise and increment. The field of commerce lay before him like a chess-board; the moves interested him like the manoeuvers of a game. More money was more power, a great advantage in the game, the means of shaping men and events and markets to his own ends and uses. It ...
— When a Man Comes to Himself • Woodrow Wilson
... extracting her own amusement, never giving herself in the slightest; then Miss Bradley, heavy and rather subservient, treated with cool, almost amused contempt by Hermione, and therefore slighted by everybody—how known it all was, like a game with the figures set out, the same figures, the Queen of chess, the knights, the pawns, the same now as they were hundreds of years ago, the same figures moving round in one of the innumerable permutations that make up the game. But the game is known, its going on is like a madness, it is ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... Dunes this evening. Would he come? For Percy knew nothing of the organized 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 ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... with a laugh. "I am not going to have you starve yourself to death up in my room. There, jump up and come and shut the door, and then have a good long read. I'll get back to you as soon as I can, and then we will have a good game at draughts or chess. But I mustn't be up here too much, or it will make the girls suspicious. There, good-bye ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... said, "with God's grace these bloodhounds shall not lightly find, yet easy of access unto them that do know the way." So he buried all the books at which offence could be taken, leaving only his own law-books, and Isoult's "Romaunts" that she had when a girl, and Dr Thorpe's "Game of the Chess," and Robin's "Song of the Lady Bessy," and the "Little Gest of ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... ties; the same may be said of Havana, and both cities in this respect are like London. It is forbidden to discuss politics in these Cuban clubs, the hours being occupied mostly in playing cards, dominoes, chess, and checkers, for money. Gambling is as natural and national in Cuba as in China. Many Chinese are seen about the streets and stores of Matanzas, variously employed, and usually in a most forlorn and impoverished condition,—poor creatures who have survived their "apprenticeship" and ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... servants know everything. Their faces are such that I am surprised Aniela does not suspect something. During dinner she was cheerful and unusually lively. The doctor's presence is a great relief to me. Kromitzki is nothing to him. He engages Aniela's attention, makes jokes, and teaches her to play chess. Pani Celina, on the contrary, reduces me to despair. The merrier Aniela grew, the longer and more funereal became her mother's countenance. I spoke to ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... already. Not ostentatiously, not in a burdensome way. Only just a cycle ride here 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 served them with ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... freeze, and found the Trio had decamped to the Little Cabin. He glanced up anxiously to see if the demijohn was on the shelf. Yes, and Kaviak sound asleep in the bottom bunk. The Colonel would climb up and have forty winks in the top one before the Boy got in for their game of chess. He didn't know how long he had slept when a faint scratching pricked through the veil of slumber, and he said to himself, "Kaviak's on a raid again," but he was too sodden with sleep to investigate. Just before he dropped off again, however, opening a heavy eye, he saw Potts go by the bunk, stop ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... pictures are "The Emperor at Solferino," "Moreau and His Staff before Hohenlinden," "A Reading at Diderot's" and the "Chess Players." ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... 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 ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... analogy of the tyro and the expert chess-player—the tyro "free," yet the expert foreseeing and holding the issue of the game in his own hands—is only superficially plausible. There seems, however, one other possible explanatory hypothesis, though ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... reposes within damask curtains; Wretchedness cowers into buckle-beds, or shivers hunger-stricken into its lair of straw: in obscure cellars, Rouge-et-Noir languidly emits its voice-of-destiny to haggard hungry Villains; while Councillors of State sit plotting, and playing their high chess-game, whereof the pawns are Men. The Lover whispers his mistress that the coach is ready; and she, full of hope and fear, glides down, to fly with him over the borders: the Thief, still more silently, sets to his picklocks ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... and invited to all the court parties. At these he sometimes met the old Duchess of Bourbon, who, being a chess player of about his force, they very generally played together. Happening once to put her king into prize, the Doctor took it. 'Ah,' says she, 'we do not take kings so.' 'We do in America,' said the ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... came to her forcibly that it must be a sturdy breed of men and women, possessed of brawn and fortitude and high courage, who made their homes here. Back in her country, once beyond suburban areas, the farms lay like the squares of a chess board, trim and orderly, tamely subdued to agriculture. Here, at first hand, she saw how man attacked the forest and conquered it. But the conquest was incomplete, for everywhere stood those stubborn roots, six and eight and ten feet across, ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... seems incredible, let us remember how old whist players note and remember every card in the pack, and can tell whether they have been played or not, and all the circumstances attending upon them. The same is true of chess players, who observe every move and can relate the whole game in detail long after it has been played. And remember, also, how one woman may pass another woman on the street, and without seeming to give her more than a careless glance, may be able to relate in detail every feature of the ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... that good old yeoman, reached the hall of Frithiof, he found the hero sitting with Bjoern at a game of chess. Gladly was he greeted by the young man, who pointed to the High Chair, the chief seat at the board, and bade him sit and drink a horn of mead while they finished ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... get audience of the King. He considered, too, that he might see his lady, and learn what was in her heart. It was the hour of meat, and the King having risen from table, had entered in his daughter's chamber. The King was at chess, with a lord who had but come from over-sea. The lady sat near the board, to watch the movements of the game. When Eliduc came before the prince, he welcomed him gladly, bidding him to seat himself close at hand. Afterwards he turned to his daughter, ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... is in general considered a very ungenteel employment, and smithery little better, notwithstanding that an Orcadian poet, who wrote in Norse about eight hundred years ago, reckons the latter amongst nine noble arts which he possessed, naming it along with playing at chess, on the harp, and ravelling runes, or as the original has it, "treading runes"—that is, compressing them into a small compass by mingling one letter with another, even as the Turkish caligraphists ravel the Arabic letters, more ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... different from the modern in that the courts were 121 feet long, instead of 78 feet, and the wooden balls and "bats"—as racquets are still called in England—were much harder. Cards and dice were passionately played, a game called "triumph" or "trump" being the ancestor of our whist. Chess was ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... the manner in which he extricated the remains of the czar's army. Oyama did not feel safe in following up the pursuit. His game was that of a skillful chess player. First make sure of the result with mathematical precision, then strike. The Japanese were deaf to the demand for ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... it, but I know better, and knowing better, I have laid in my stores accordingly. You have but to choose. I possess a varied assortment. Chess, draughts, cards, dominoes—everything in ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... in the time of the first or the second Temple. (94) In his capacity as the chancellor of Solomon, he was the object of the king's special favor. He was frequently invited to be the companion of the king in his games of chess. The wise king naturally was always the winner. One day Solomon left the chess-board for a moment, Benaiah used his absence to remove one of the king's chess-men, and the king lost the game. Solomon gave much thought to the occurrence. He came to the conclusion that his chancellor ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG |
