An Eastbourne meditative man returning to where he stays, with his daily ounce of tobacco already afire, sees in the streets what are called by the natives “cherry-bangs,” crowded with people, and, further, cabriolets and such vehicles holding parties and families.  The good folks are driving away from the sea for the better part of the day, going to Battle and other places inland.  The puzzle of what to do with their sea is too much for them, and they are going away for a little to rest their minds.  Regarded as a centre of drives one might think an inland place would be preferable to a seaside town, which at best commands but a half-circle.  However that may be, the fact remains that one of the chief occupations of your common visitor to the seaside is going away from it.  Than this fact there can be nothing more conclusive in support of my argument that ordinary people are absolutely ignorant and incapable of staying by the seaside.

CONCERNING CHESS

The passion for playing chess is one of the most unaccountable in the world.  It slaps the theory of natural selection in the face.  It is the most absorbing of occupations, the least satisfying of desires, an aimless excrescence upon life.  It annihilates a man.  You have, let us say, a promising politician, a rising artist, that you wish to destroy.  Dagger or bomb are archaic, clumsy, and unreliable—­but teach him, inoculate him with chess!  It is well, perhaps, that the right way of teaching chess is so little known, that consequently in most cases the plot fails in the performance, the dagger turns aside.  Else we should all be chess-players—­there would be none left to do the business of the world.  Our statesmen would sit with pocket boards while the country went to the devil, our army would bury itself in chequered contemplation, our bread-winners would forget their wives in seeking after impossible mates.  The whole world would be disorganised.  I can fancy this abominable hypnotism so wrought into the constitution of men that the cabmen would go trying to drive their horses in Knights’ moves up and down Charing Cross Road.  And now and again a suicide would come to hand with the pathetic inscription pinned to his chest:  “I checked with my Queen too soon.  I cannot bear the thought of it.”  There is no remorse like the remorse of chess.

Only, happily, as we say, chess is taught the wrong way round.  People put out the board before the learner with all the men in battle array, sixteen a side, with six different kinds of moves, and the poor wretch is simply crushed and appalled.  A lot of things happen, mostly disagreeable, and then a mate comes looming up through the haze of pieces.  So he goes away awestricken but unharmed, secretly believing that all chess-players are humbugs, and that intelligent chess, which is neither chancy nor rote-learned, is beyond the wit of man.  But clearly this is an unreasonable method of instruction.  Before the beginner can understand the beginning of the game he must surely understand the end; how can he commence playing until he knows what he is playing for?  It is like starting athletes on a race, and leaving them to find out where the winning-post is hidden.