Rensselaer Republican, Volume 28, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 September 1895 — Rip Van Winkle in China. [ARTICLE]

Rip Van Winkle in China.

A Chinese writer, Tcheng-Ki-Tong, describes Chinese chess as a game of patience. It is played with three hundred and sixty-one pawns, and the player sometimes deliberates half an hour before moving one of them. Literary men aud ladies are said to be fond of it, and what sounds more likely, “people who have retired from business.” There are three sounds, the writer says, which help to turn one’s thoughts toward what is pure and delicate; the sound of falling water, the murmur of wind In the trees, and the rattle of chess pawns. In the time of the Telling dynasty, as the story goes, a wood cutter who had gone to the top of a mountain for a day’s work, found two young men there playing chess. He stopped to look on, and presently became deeply Interested, and after a while one of the players gave him a piece of candied fruit to eat. The game grew more and more exciting. The wood, cutter forgot his work, and sat hour after hour with his eyerTm the board. At last he happened to look at his ax. The handle of it had rotted away. That frightened him. He jumped up, and hastened down the mountain to the village. Alas, among all the people in the street be recognized not one, and he found on inquiry that several centuries had passed since be started out with his ax.