board, you hear a murmur of revelation issuing from his lips ... he is
drawing back from the precipice ... your ambuscade is in vain and now you
must start plotting and scheming all over again.

Nay, say it is anything you like, but do not say it is dull. And do not,
please, suggest that I am talking of it as an old man's game only. I have
played it since I was a boy, forty years ago, and I cannot say at what age
I have loved it best. It is a game for all ages, all seasons, all sexes,
all climates, for summer evenings or winter nights, for land or for sea. It
is the very water of Lethe for sorrow or disappointment, for there is no
oblivion so profound as that which it offers for your solace. And what
satisfaction is there comparable with a well-won "mate"? It is different
from any other joy that games have to offer. There is a swift delight in a
late "cut" or a ball that spread-eagles the other fellow's wicket; there is
a delicate pleasure in a long jenny neatly negotiated, in a drive that
sails straight from the tee towards the flag on the green, in a hard return
that hits the back line of the tennis court. But a perfect "mate"
irradiates the mind with the calm of indisputable things. It has the
absoluteness of mathematics, and it gives you victory ennobled by the sense
of intellectual struggle and stern justice. 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