Blessed be the memory of him who gave the world this immortal game.  For the price of a taxicab ride or a visit to the cinema, you may, thanks to that unknown benefactor, possess a world of illimitable adventures.  When Alice passed through the Looking Glass into Wonderland, she did not more completely leave the common day behind than when you sit down before the chessboard with a stout foe before you and pass out into this magic realm of bloodless combat.  I have heard unhappy people say that it is “dull.”  Dull, my dear sir or madam?  Why, there is no excitement on this earth comparable with this kingly game.  I have had moments at Lord’s, I admit, and at the Oval.  But here is a game which is all such moments, where you are up to the eyes in plots and ambuscades all the time, and the fellow in front of you is up to his eyes in them, too.  What agonies as you watch his glance wandering over the board.  Does he suspect that trap?  Does he see the full meaning of that offer of the knight which seems so tempting?...  His hand touches the wrong piece and your heart thumps a Te Deum.  Is he?... yes ... no ... he pauses ... he removes his hand from the piece ... oh, heavens, his eye is wandering back to that critical pawn ... ah, light is dawning on him ... you see it illuminating his face as he bends over the board, you hear a murmur of revelation issuing from his lips ... he is drawing back from the precipice ... your ambuscade is in vain and now you must start plotting and scheming all over again.

Nay, say it is anything you like, but do not say it is dull.  And do not, please, suggest that I am talking of it as an old man’s game only.  I have played it since I was a boy, forty years ago, and I cannot say at what age I have loved it best.  It is a game for all ages, all seasons, all sexes, all climates, for summer evenings or winter nights, for land or for sea.  It is the very water of Lethe for sorrow or disappointment, for there is no oblivion so profound as that which it offers for your solace.  And what satisfaction is there comparable with a well-won “mate”?  It is different from any other joy that games have to offer.  There is a swift delight in a late “cut” or a ball that spread-eagles the other fellow’s wicket; there is a delicate pleasure in a long jenny neatly negotiated, in a drive that sails straight from the tee towards the flag on the green, in a hard return that hits the back line of the tennis court.  But a perfect “mate” irradiates the mind with the calm of indisputable things.  It has the absoluteness of mathematics, and it gives you victory ennobled by the sense of intellectual struggle and stern justice.  There are “mates” that linger in the memory like a sonnet of Keats.