Another of them is that triumph of pure reason, chess, an unadulterated product of the brain—i.e., of phosphorus—i.e., of fish. Nobody stakes money on chess or offers a prize to the best player. Honor at that board is its own reward. So when we are told of the Centennial Chess Tournament we recognize at once the fitness of the word borrowed from the chivalric joust. It is the culmination of human strife. The thought, labor and ardor spread over three hundred and fifty acres sums itself in that black and white board the size of your handkerchief. War and statecraft condense themselves into it. Armies and nations move with the chessman. Sally, leaguer, feint, flank-march, triumphant charge are one after another rehearsed. There, too, moves the game of politics in plot and counterplot. It is the climax of the subjective. From those lists the trumpet-blare, the crowd, the glitter, the banners, “the boast of heraldry and pomp of power,” melt utterly away. To the world-champions who bend above the little board the big glass houses and all the treasures stared at by admiring thousands are as naught.
[Illustration: SCENE AT ONE OF THE ENTRANCES TO THE GROUNDS—THE TURNSTILE.]
But man is an animal, and not by any means of intellect all compact. The average mortal confesses to a craving for the stimulus of great shows, of material purposes, substantial objects of study and palpable prizes. It is so in 1876, as it was in 1776, and as it will be in a long series of Seventy-sixes.