Love Conquers All | Page 8

side-lines. That is what this series of

lessons aims to teach you to do, (of course, if you are going to be nasty
and say that you don't want even to watch it, why all this time has been,
wasted on my part as well as on yours).
HOW TO FIND A GAME TO WATCH
The first problem confronting the chess spectator is to find some people
who are playing. The bigger the city, the harder it is to find anyone
indulging in chess. In a small town you can usually go straight to
Wilbur Tatnuck's General Store, and be fairly sure of finding a quiet
game in progress over behind the stove and the crate of pilot-biscuit,
but as you draw away from the mitten district you find the sporting
instinct of the population cropping out in other lines and chess
becoming more and more restricted to the sheltered corners of
Y.M.C.A. club-rooms and exclusive social organizations.
However, we shall have to suppose, in order to get any article written at
all, that you have found two people playing chess somewhere. They
probably will neither see nor hear you as you come up on them so you
can stand directly behind the one who is defending the south goal
without fear of detection.
THE DETAILS OF THE GAME
At first you may think that they are both dead, but a mirror held to the
lips of the nearest contestant will probably show moisture (unless, of
course, they really should be dead, which would be a horrible ending
for a little lark like this. I once heard of a murderer who propped his
two victims up against a chess board in sporting attitudes and was able
to get as far as Seattle before his crime was discovered).
Soon you will observe a slight twitching of an eye-lid or a moistening
of the lips and then, like a greatly retarded moving-picture of a person
passing the salt, one of the players will lift a chess-man from one spot
on the board and place it on another spot.
It would be best not to stand too close to the board at this time as you
are are likely to be trampled on in the excitement. For this action that

you have just witnessed corresponds to a run around right end in a
football game or a two-bagger in baseball, and is likely to cause
considerable enthusiasm on the one hand and deep depression on the
other. They may even forget themselves to the point of shifting their
feet or changing the hands on which they are resting their foreheads.
Almost anything is liable to happen.
When the commotion has died down a little, it will be safe for you to
walk around and stand behind the other player and wait there for the
next move. While waiting it would be best to stand with the weight of
your body evenly distributed between your two feet, for you will
probably be standing there a long time and if you bear down on one
foot all of the time, that foot is bound to get tired. A comfortable stance
for watching chess is with the feet slightly apart (perhaps a foot or a
foot and a half), with a slight bend at the knees to rest the legs and the
weight of the body thrown forward on the balls of the feet. A rhythmic
rising on the toes, holding the hands behind the back, the head well up
and the chest out, introduces a note of variety into the position which
will be welcome along about dusk.
Not knowing anything about the game, you will perhaps find it difficult
at first to keep your attention on the board. This can be accomplished
by means of several little optical tricks. For instance, if you look at the
black and white squares on the board very hard and for a very long time,
they will appear to jump about and change places. The black squares
will rise from the board about a quarter of an inch and slightly overlap
the white ones. Then, if you change focus suddenly, the white squares
will do the same thing to the black ones. And finally, after doing this
until someone asks you what you are looking cross-eyed for, if you will
shut your eyes tight you will see an exact reproduction of the
chess-board, done in pink and green, in your mind's eye. By this time,
the players will be almost ready for another move.
This will make two moves that you have watched. It is now time to get
a little fancy work into your game. About an hour will have already
gone by and you should be so thoroughly grounded in the fundamentals
of chess watching that you can