mould the fates to our own will, we would give our children? Well, I
know not what may be your conceptions upon this matter, but I will tell
you mine, and I hope I shall find that our views are not very
discrepant.

Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of every one
of us would, one day or other, depend upon his winning or losing a game
of chess. Don't you think that we should all consider it to be a primary
duty to learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces; to have a
notion of a gambit, and a keen eye for all the means of giving and
getting out of check? Do you not think that we should look with a
disapprobation amounting to scorn, upon the father who allowed his son,
or the state which allowed its members, to grow up without knowing a
pawn from a knight?

Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth, that the life, the
fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of
those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of
the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than
chess. It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every man and
woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own.
The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the
universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The
player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is
always fair, just and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he
never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for
ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with
that sort of overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight
in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated--without haste, but
without remorse.