Love Conquers All Part 19

There seems to be a concerted effort, manifest in the "Take Along a Book" drive, to induce vacationists to slip at least one volume into the trunk before getting Daddy to jump on it.

This is a fine idea, for there is always a s.p.a.ce between the end of the tennis-racquet and the box of soap in which the shoe-whitening is liable to tip over unless you jam a book in with it. Any book will do.

It is usually a book that you have been meaning to read all Spring, one that you have got so used to lying about to people who have asked you if you have read it that you have almost kidded yourself into believing that you really have read it. You picture yourself out in the hammock or down on the rocks, with a pillow under your head and pipe or a box of candy near at hand, just devouring page after page of it. The only thing that worries you is what you will read when you have finished that. "Oh, well," you think, "there will probably be some books in the town library. Maybe I can get Gibbon there. This summer will be a good time to read Gibbon through."

Your trunk doesn't reach the cottage until four days after you arrive, owing to the ferry-pilots' strike. You don't get it unpacked down as far as the layer in which the book is until you have been there a week.

Then the book is taken out and put on the table. In transit it has tried to eat its way through a pair of tramping-boots, with the result that one corner and the first twenty pages have become dog-eared, but that won't interfere with its being read.

Several other things do interfere, however. The nice weather, for instance. You start out from your room in the morning and somehow or other never get back to it except when you are in a hurry to get ready for meals or for bed. You try to read in bed one night, but you can't seem to fix your sun-burned shoulders in a comfortable position.

You take the book down to luncheon and leave it at the table. And you don't miss it for three days. When you find it again it has large blisters on page 35 where some water was dropped on it.

Then Mrs. Beatty, who lives in Montclair in the winter time (no matter where you go for the summer, you always meet some people who live in Montclair in the winter), borrows the book, as she has heard so much about it. Two weeks later she brings it back, and explains that Prince got hold of it one afternoon and chewed just a little of the back off, but says that she doesn't think it will be noticed when the book is in the bookcase.

Back to the table in the bedroom it goes and is used to keep unanswered post-cards in. It also is convenient as a backing for cards which you yourself are writing. And the flyleaf makes an excellent place for a bridge-score if there isn't any other paper handy.

When it comes time to pack up for home, you shake the sand from among the leaves and save out the book to be read on the train. And you leave it in the automobile that takes you to the station.

But for all that, "take along a book." It might rain all summer.

x.x.xVII

CONFESSIONS OF A CHESS CHAMPION

With the opening of the baseball season, the sporting urge stirs in one's blood and we turn to such books as "My Chess Career," by J.R.

Capablanca. Mr. Capablanca, I gather from his text, plays chess very well. Wherein he unquestionably has something on me.

His book is a combination of autobiography and pictorial examples of difficult games he has partic.i.p.ated in and won. I could understand the autobiographical part perfectly, but although I have seen chess diagrams in the evening papers for years, I never have been able to become nervous over one. It has always seemed to me that when you have seen one diagram of a chessboard you have seen them all. Therefore, I can give only a superficial review of the technical parts of Mr. Capablanca's book.

His personal reminiscences, however, are full of poignant episodes. For instance, let us take an incident which occurred in his early boyhood when he found out what sort of man his father really was--a sombre event in the life of any boy, much more so for the boy Capablanca.

"I was born in Havana, the capital of the Island of Cuba," he says, "the 19th of November, 1888. I was not yet five years old when by accident I came into my father's private office and found him playing with another gentleman. I had never seen a game of chess before; the pieces interested me and I went the next day to see them play again. The third day, as I looked on, my father, a very poor beginner, moved a Knight from a white square to another white square. His opponent, apparently not a better player, did not notice it. My father won, and I proceeded to call him a cheat and to laugh."

Imagine the feelings of a young boy entering his father's private office and seeing a man whom he had been brought up to love and to revere moving a Knight from one white square to another. It is a wonder that the boy had the courage to grow up at all with a start in life like that.

But he did grow up, and at the age of eight, in spite of the advice of doctors, he was a frequent visitor at the Havana Chess Club. As he says in describing this period of his career, "Soon Don Celso Golmayo, the strongest player there, was unable to give me a rook." So you can see how good he was. Don Celso couldn't give him a rook. And if Don Celso couldn't, who on earth could?

In his introduction, Mr. Capablanca (I wish that I could get it out of my head that Mr. Capablanca is possibly a relation of the Casablanca boy who did the right thing by the burning deck. They are, of course, two entirely different people)--in his introduction, Mr. Capablanca says:

"Conceit I consider a foolish thing; but more foolish still is that false modesty that vainly attempts to conceal that which all facts tend to prove."

It is this straining to overcome a foolish, false modesty which leads him to say, in connection with his matches with members of the Manhattan Chess Club. "As one by one I mowed them down without the loss of a single game, my superiority became apparent." Or, in speaking of his "endings" (a term we chess experts use to designate the last part of our game), to murmur modestly: "The endings I already played very well, and to my mind had attained the high standard for which they were in the future to be well known." Mr. Capablanca will have to watch that false modesty of his. It will get him into trouble some day.

Although this column makes no pretense of carrying sporting news, it seems only right to print a part of the running story of the big game between Capablanca and Dr. O.S. Bernstein in the San Sebastian tournament of 1911. Capablanca wore the white, while Dr. Bernstein upheld the honor of the black.

The tense moment of the game had been reached. Capablanca has the ball on Dr. Bernstein's 3-yard line on the second down, with a minute and a half to play. The stands are wild. Cries of "Hold 'em, Bernstein!" and "Touchdown, Capablanca!" ring out on the frosty November air.

Brave voices are singing the fighting song ent.i.tled "Capablanca's Day"

which runs as follows:

"Oh, sweep, sweep across the board, With your castles, queens, and p.a.w.ns; We are with you, all Havana's horde, Till the sun of victory dawns; Then it's fight, _fight_, FIGHT!

To your last white knight, For the truth must win alway, And our hearts beat true Old "J.R." for you On Capa-blanca's Day."

"Up to this point the game had proceeded along the lines generally recommended by the masters," writes Capablanca. "The last move, however, is a slight deviation from the regular course, which brings this Knight back to B in order to leave open the diagonal for the Q, and besides is more in accordance with the defensive nature of the game. Much more could be said as to the reasons that make Kt - B the preferred move of most masters.... Of course, lest there be some misapprehension, let me state that the move Kt - B is made in conjunction with K R - K, which comes first."

It is lucky that Mr. Casablanca made that explanation, for I was being seized with just that misapprehension which he feared. (Mr.

_Capablanca_, I mean.)

Below is the box-score by innings:

1. P - K4. P - K4.

2. Kt - QB3. Kt - QB3.

3. P - B4. P x P.

4. Kt - B3. P - K Kt4.

(Game called on account of darkness.)

x.x.xVIII

"RIP VAN WINKLE"

After all, there is nothing like a good folk-opera for wholesome fun, and the boy who can turn out a rollicking folk-opera for old and young is Percy MacKaye. His latest is a riot from start to finish. You can buy it in book form, published by Knopf. Just ask for "Rip Van Winkle" and spend the evening falling out of your chair. (You wake up just as soon as you fall and are all ready again for a fresh start.)

Of course it is a little rough in spots, but you know what Percy MacKaye is when he gets loose on a folk-opera. It is good, clean Rabelaisian fun, such as was in "Was.h.i.+ngton, the Man Who Made Us." I always felt that it was very prudish of the police to stop that play just as it was commencing its run. Or maybe it wasn't the police that stopped it.

Something did, I remember.

But "Rip Van Winkle" has much more zip to it than "Was.h.i.+ngton" had. In the first place, the lyrics are better. They have more of a lilt to them than the lines of the earlier work had. Here is the song hit of the first act, sung by the Goose Girl. Try this over on your piano:

_Kaaterskill, Kaaterskill, Cloud on the Kaaterskill!

Will it be fair, or lower?

Silver rings On my pond I see; And my gander he Shook both his white wings Like a suns.h.i.+ne shower_.

I venture to say that Irving Berlin himself couldn't have done anything catchier than that by way of a lyric. Or this little s.n.a.t.c.h of a refrain sung by the old women of the town:

_Nay, nay, nay!

A suns.h.i.+ne shower Won't last a half an hour_.