Chess and Chess-players: Consisting of Original Stories and Sketches

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C.J. Skeet, 1850 - 384 pages

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Page 148 - Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing All vital things that wake to bring News of birds and blossoming, Sudden, thy shadow fell on me ; I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy ! I vowed that I would dedicate my powers To thee and thine : have I not kept the vow...
Page 291 - And the LORD said unto Satan, Whence comest thou ? Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.
Page 365 - O, weep for Adonais ! though our tears Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head ! And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers, And teach them thine own sorrow! Say: 'With me Died Adonais ; till the Future dares Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity...
Page 364 - And death is a low mist which cannot blot The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, And love and life contend in it, for what Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.
Page 330 - Come, Ossian, come away," he says. Fingal has received his fame. We passed away, like flames that had shone for a season. Our departure was in renown. Though the plains of our battles are dark and silent ; our fame is in the four grey stones. The voice of Ossian has been heard. The harp has been strung in Selma. " Come, Ossian, come away," he says, " come, fly with thy fathers on clouds.
Page 29 - ... the key appeared to perform the same number of revolutions ; evincing thereby that the revolving axis was unconnected with machinery, except, perhaps a ratchet wheel and click, or some similar apparatus, to enable it to produce the necessary sounds, and consequently that the key, like that of a child's watch, might be turned whenever the purposes of the exhibition seemed to require it.
Page 5 - The inventor, or rather, it should be said, the father of this creature, •was Wolffgang de Kempelen, a Hungarian gentleman, aulic counsellor to the royal chamber of the domains of the Emperor in Hungary. Being at Vienna in the year 1769, he offered to the Empress Maria Theresa, to construct a piece of mechanism more unaccountable than any she had previously witnessed; and accordingly, within six months, the Automaton chess player was presented at court...
Page 262 - ... at the Regence as to who or what I was, and was universally supposed to be living on my means — a mere Paris flaneur. Do not lose sight of this fact. Well, I bore my condition cheerfully, practised the most rigid economy as to ways and means, and sat early and late at my desk, during business hours ; existing on the present, living...
Page 241 - The shah waved his hand with an expression of satisfaction, and the chief of the police standing back made way for the moollah. Reza Hafed repeated his charge against the captives, and dilated, as far as he durst, upon the enormity of their guilt. His bloated countenance, redolent of the hue of the forbidden juice of the grape, lighted up like a huge pomegranate, as he poured forth words more and more forcible and criminatory. The base slave Miriam told her tale, and whispers ran among the wezeers,...
Page 210 - And Ali Mohammed took a lusty pull at the jug. As he spoke, a deep-toned voice outside asked for egress at the Tehran gate ; and the party pricked up their ears like sportsmen when they hear the footfall of an antelope. The stranger was introduced, and confronted the commander of the post, who, with an air of careless haughtiness, glanced at him from bend to foot, treating with supercilious indifference his renewed demand to be permitted to go forth from Ispahan.

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