always chalk him away, hardly deigning to examine his luggage even).  He has figured as the sea captain of the New York Sun, the farmer of the Rochester Press, the ladies chess professor of the Albany Argus, and the veteran of the Montreal Press, his vicissitudes have led him into strange places, among others to a wigwam of the Indians at Sarnia in 1860, and a representation of one in the Vienna Exhibition of 1873, when much to the amusement of Professor Anderssen and Baron Kolisch he received such a cordial reception from a lady who recognized him as an old friend and customer at Niagara falls, the lady in question being commonly termed a squaw (not a disrespectful word for a lady it is hoped).  Bird has been in the Nest at Amsterdam, in the Bowery at New York, and in the accident ward at Vienna, and has witnessed many strange things and distressing circumstances, and has endured interviewers and Irish Home Rulers in America without a shudder, and has perhaps been asked more questions about chess than any man living, because he good naturedly always answers them, and has furnished matter enough in ten minutes for a two-column article.  He has been accused of a partiality for whisky hot, especially when served by female hands, of ordering soles by special train at Nuremberg, though he only disposed or them at breakfast not knowing their price or from whence they came.  Blackburne and Hoffer are responsible for the statement that he sat up through the night at Vienna preparing statistics, with nothing but his hat on.  The allegation in the Field and elsewhere that he instructed the French President to fetch a cab for him on a busy fete day at the Champs de Elysees, in 1878, is not just, that genial and courteous gentleman having volunteered to do so under exceptional circumstances, and as all act of sympathy, and perhaps on account of Bird’s play, who though suffering acutely from gout on that particular day won one of his two best games of Anderssen.  If Bird had a carriage and pair to the barbers to get a shave (quite recently asserted) it was because he could not find a conveyance with one horse in time to reach his destination.  When he made a late dinner solely off Pate de Foie Grass at the Marquis d’Andigny’s banquet at St. Germains, Paris, in 1878, when there were any number of courses, he did so because be liked the flavour (certainly did not find it savourless) not comprehending the waiter’s surprise or aware of its bilious tendency till afterwards.  Even a king once dined off goose livers or something of the sort, and we have heard somewhere of a “feast of snails.”

Even assuming glasses of Lager, 20 Schnaps, and 30 plates of bread and cheese were consumed at the village with the unpronounceable name 70 miles this side of Nuremberg, one intensely hot afternoon in July, 1883, on the eve of the International Tournament in that city when the train unpolitely went on, leaving him behind, Bird was not the only consumer nor responsible for the food famine, which the Field and the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic say prevailed afterwards for the whole of the inhabitants of the place (fifty souls) including the old lady ill in bed, and her attendant who deserted her for the afternoon partook thereof.