Marshall Frank James. Marshall's Chess swindles

New York: American Chess Bulletin, 1914. — 151 p."Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou livest Live well."-Milton.
"Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of every one of us would, one day or other, depend upon our winning or losing a game of chess. Don't you think that we should all conside'r least the names .and moves of the pieces; to have a notion of a gambit, arid a keen eye for all the means of giving and getting out of check.? Do you not think we should look with a disapprobation amounting to scorn upon the father who allowed his sons, or the State which allowed its members, to grow up without knowing a pawn from a knight? Yet it is very plain and elementary truth that the life, the fortune, and the happiness of everyone of us-and, more or less, of those who are connected with us-do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess.It is a game which has been played for untold ages, eery man and wO.man of us being one ot the two players in a game' of his or her own. The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the u u iverse, the rules of the game are what we call tte laws o f Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and (latient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To a man who plays well the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of oVe'rl\owing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength. And who plays ill is checkmated-without haste, but without remorse."My metaphor will remind some of you of the famous picture in which Retzsch has depicted Satan playing at chess with a man for his soul. Substitute for the mocking fiend in that picture a calm, strong angel, who is playing for love, as we say, and would rather lose than win. And I should accept it as an image of human life."