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 proceed to the next step.

Have some one of your friends bring you a chair, a table and an old pyrography outfit, together with some book-ends on which to burn a design.

Seat yourself at the table in the chair and (if I remember the process correctly) squeeze the bulb attached to the needle until the latter becomes red hot.  Then, grasping the book-ends in the left hand, carefully trace around the pencilled design with the point of the needle.  It probably will be a picture of the Lion of Lucerne, and you will let the needle slip on the way round the face, giving it the appearance of having shaved in a Pullman that morning.  But that really won’t make any difference, for the whole thing is not so much to do a nice pair of book-ends as to help you along in watching the chess-match.

If you have any scruples against burning wood, you may knit something, or paste stamps in an album.

And before you know it, the game will be over and you can put on your things and go home.

VII

WATCHING BASEBALL

D.A.C.  NEWS

Eighteen men play a game of baseball and eighteen thousand watch them, and yet those who play are the only ones who have any official direction in the matter of rules and regulations.  The eighteen thousand are allowed to run wild.  They don’t have even a Spalding’s Guide containing group photographs of model organizations of fans in Fall River, Mass., or the Junior Rooters of Lyons, Nebraska.  Whatever course of behavior a fan follows at a game he makes up for himself.  This is, of course, ridiculous.

The first set of official rulings for spectators at baseball games has been formulated and is herewith reproduced.  It is to be hoped that in the general cleanup which the game is undergoing, the grandstand and bleachers will not resent a little dictation from the authorities.

In the first place, there is the question of shouting encouragement, or otherwise, at the players.  There must be no more random screaming.  It is of course understood that the players are entirely dependent on the advice offered them from the stands for their actions in the game, and how is a batter to know what to do if, for instance, he hears a little man in the bleachers shouting, “Wait for ’em, Wally!  Wait for ’em,” and another little man in the south stand shouting “Take a crack at the first one, Wally!”?  What would you do?  What would Lincoln have done?

The official advisers in the stands must work together.  They must remember that as the batter advances toward the plate he is listening for them to give him his instructions, and if he hears conflicting advice there is no telling what he may do.  He may even have to decide for himself.