Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 212, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 September 1920 — WELCOME FOR CHESS PLAYER [ARTICLE]

WELCOME FOR CHESS PLAYER

Devotee of Game, Traveler Asset ts, Will Never Laok Companionship or Entertainment Anywhere. If you want to travel but feel unequal to learning a supply of modern languages for the purpose, thefi play chess. The ideal substitute for Esperanto and Latin at last has been found, if the experiences of a scholar who lately returned from long wanderings on foot through Europe may be trusted, sos he says that everywhere the enthusiast can find chess players — That be need never lack companionship or entertainment. The speech of chess is more reliably universal than musical notation. You may employ it in hut and castle without danger of going astray from etiquette, and it has no pitfalls of double mgant ng The traveler may enjoy his little game In the Alhambra, in the mosques of Stamboul and In London clubs. His chess men being his faithful companions, a partner was sure to turn up, of whgt nationality it mattered not at all. Once, on a walking trip the whole length of the Italian peninsula, he visited the ancient Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino, whose learned monks were all devoted to chess and set aside a spacious room in the great building for their games. Its furniture consisted merely of a chess table; players and spectators stood. The monks kept him two days as their guest in a continuous tournament, and he lost but one game after a banquet in his honor whereat old, rare vintages appeared In profusion. The scene of the play' was dramatic, the contestants standing In the center of a circle of cowled monks, who followed every move in Intense silence. Another "continuous tournament” he played on horseback while journeying through Mesopotamia; another while drifting down the Tigris on a raft of goatskins to Mosul, where he tried his skill with the archbishop of Bagdad, a genial opponent. At Tabriz, metropolis of Persia, he played simultaneously against the right strongest players of the city. The traveler attributes his success in a diplomatic mission to an act of great self-denial—he permitted a distinguished nobleman, commissioned by the shah to conduct negotiations with him, to defeat him in a series of games which preceded the contest of wits.