The first problem confronting the chess spectator is to find some people
who are playing. The bigger the city, the harder it is to find anyone
indulging in chess. In a small town you can usually go straight to
Wilbur Tatnuck's General Store, and be fairly sure of finding a quiet
game in progress over behind the stove and the crate of pilot-biscuit,
but as you draw away from the mitten district you find the sporting
instinct of the population cropping out in other lines and chess
becoming more and more restricted to the sheltered corners of Y.M.C.A.
club-rooms and exclusive social organizations.

However, we shall have to suppose, in order to get any article written
at all, that you have found two people playing chess somewhere. They
probably will neither see nor hear you as you come up on them so you
can stand directly behind the one who is defending the south goal
without fear of detection.


THE DETAILS OF THE GAME

At first you may think that they are both dead, but a mirror held to the
lips of the nearest contestant will probably show moisture (unless, of
course, they really should be dead, which would be a horrible ending for
a little lark like this. I once heard of a murderer who propped his two
victims up against a chess board in sporting attitudes and was able to
get as far as Seattle before his crime was discovered).

Soon you will observe a slight twitching of an eye-lid or a moistening
of the lips and then, like a greatly retarded moving-picture of a person
passing the salt, one of the players will lift a chess-man from one spot
on the board and place it on another spot.