There are "mates" that linger
in the memory like a sonnet of Keats.
It is medicine for the sick mind or the anxious spirit. We need a means of
escape from the infinite, from the maze of this incalculable life, from the
burden and the mystery of a world where all things "go contrairy," as Mrs.
Gummidge used to say. Some people find the escape in novels that move
faithfully to that happy ending which the tangled skein of life denies us.
Some find it in hobbies where the mind is at peace in watching processes
that are controllable and results that with patience are assured. But in
the midst of this infinity I know no finite world so complete and
satisfying as that I enter when I take down the chessmen and marshal my
knights and squires on the chequered field. It is then I am truly happy. I
have closed the door on the infinite and inexplicable and have come into a
kingdom where justice reigns, where cause and effect follow "as the night
the day," and where, come victory or come defeat, the sky is always clear
and the joy unsullied.
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