<In an interesting chapter of reminiscences appearing in a recent number of "M.A.P.,” Sir Wkye Bayliss, president of the Royal Society of British Artists, says :—“Chess was always a delight to me, and I greatly wonder that so few players are found among artists. Ruskin indeed is a great lover of the game, as have been many of the most distinguished men of letters. Turning as it does on such high faculties as imagination, analysis, synthesis, the chess board should be found in every studio. In this also, as in everything else, my father and I were chums, and while still a child I could beat everyone I knew but himself. Staunton, who was a friend, could give me only the smallest odds; he could not give me the odds of playing without smoking his pipe. I could easily play half a dozen games simultaneously without seeing the board. Now, for the merchant, who has no cares when he leaves his office; for the parson, who has nothing to think about but his next sermon, and doesn't think much about that; for the lawyer or doctor, who learned all they want to know in the days of their youth; for the Parliament man, who has only to stand in the lobby and feel which way the wind whistles through his brains, it is all very well to take life easily, to sing or dance, or go to the theatre, or play tennis, or take a boat up the river. But for the artist, who never can lay the ghosts which haunt his brain, who day and night and night and day is seeing what no one else can see — visions that he is striving to crystallise into beautiful and permanent shapes, who wears his life out in honest work that makes the brain sweat — for the artist, I say, some quiet, simple, unfatiguing, refreshing recreation is needed, and I find this in chess.">

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