However, there are other possibilities. Since
there is no room in the garden for a watchdog and
a garden, it might be a good idea to paint a phosphorescent
and terrifying watchdog on the wall. Perhaps a
watchlion would be even more terrifying—and,
presumably, just as easy to paint. Any burglar
would be deterred if he came across a lion suddenly
in the back garden. One way or another, it should
be possible to have something a little more interesting
than mere bricks at the end of the estate.
And if the worst comes to the worst—if
it is found that no flowers (other than groundsel)
will flourish in my garden, owing to lack of soil
or lack of sun—then the flowers must be
painted on the walls. This would have its advantages,
for we should waste no time over the early and uninteresting
stages of the plant, but depict it at once in its
full glory. And we should keep our garden up to
date. When delphiniums went out of season, we
should rub them out and give you chrysanthemums; and
if an untimely storm uprooted the chrysanthemums,
in an hour or two we should have a wonderful show of
dahlias to take their place. And we should still
have the floor-space free for a sundial, or—if
you insist on exercise—for the last hoop
and the stick of a full-sized croquet-lawn.
The Game of Kings
I do not claim to be an authority on either the history
or the practice of chess, but, as the poet Gray observed
when he saw his old school from a long way off, it
is sometimes an advantage not to know too much of
one’s subject. The imagination can then
be exercised more effectively. So when I am playing
Capablanca (or old Robinson) for the championship
of the home pastures, my thoughts are not fixed exclusively
upon the “mate” which is threatening; they
wander off into those enchanted lands of long ago,
when flesh-and-blood knights rode at stone-built castles,
and thin-lipped bishops, all smiles and side-long
glances, plotted against the kings who ventured to
oppose them. This is the real fascination of
chess.
You observe that I speak of castles, not of rooks.
I do not know whence came this custom of calling the
most romantic piece on the board by the name of a
very ordinary bird, but I, at least, will not be a
party to it. I refuse to surrender the portcullis
and the moat, the bastion and the well-manned towers,
which were the features of every castle with which
hitherto I have played, in order to take the field
with allies so unromantic as a brace of rooks.
You may tell me that “rook” is a corruption
of this or that word, meaning something which has
never laid an egg in its life. It may be so, but
in that case you cannot blame me for continuing to
call it the castle which its shape proclaims it.
