Another damaging instance of French frivolity is forthcoming. Although an international chess tournament has been in progress im Paris, since the middle of May, it as not attracted the slightest attention on the part of the public. Daily telegrams to Lontion, Berlin, Vienna and New York, keep the whole world informed of the progress of the encounter, but the Paris payers have ignored it completely and.the Parisians have kept carefully away. The promoters evidently realised the extent of French indifference to the noble game, inasmuch as the competition has been held in a Boulevard club, to which the public are not admitted. In London an_ affair of this kind would be held in a public hall and a fee for admission would be charged, but they manage these things differently in France. It must be admitted, after all, that the proceedings are not: lively, even toa chess-player. To discover an interesting position on one of the boards, to wait quarter of aw hour in vain for one of the antagonists to make a move, to take a walk, come back and find the pieces just as you left them, is trying to any but the most enthusiastic spectator.
'A further and crushing proof of the incapacity of the Gallic mind for chess is to be found in the fact that only two out of the seventeen competitors are French, and that these two, MIN. Rosen and Didier have consistently succumbed to their foreign rivals. Their most dangerous competitors for the wooden spoon are the veteran English enthusiast, Mr. James Mortimer, and the Mexican representative, Mr. Marquez Sterling. The first prize (£200 in cash and a splendid Sevres vase given by President Loubet) has already been secured by the champion of the world, Herr E. Lasker, a German by birth and' an Englishman ' by residence. Herr Lasker's outer man does not suggest great things. He is small, pale, shortsighted and thin—so thin, in fact, as to be lamentably deficient in'"Sitzfleisch," a commodity which, I understand, is ¢on-sidered in Germany to be essential to sue-cess in chess. As he is able to smoke French Government cigars with apparent enjoyment he has, no doubt, more stamina than the casual spectator would give him credit for. He has a crop of thick black hair, wears a short beard and moustache, and surveys the board through a pince-nez, Pillsbury and Marshall, the two Americans who seem to have the second and third prizes between them, with possible interference from Maroczy, the Hungarian, are both very youthful in appearance. Mar-Il, extremely thin, and has eloped a singular stoop in the nape of his neck, owing, no doubt, to much stoping over the chessboard, He is the only ayer in the tournament who has scored point at the expense of Lasker. Pills: bury display Kable capa cigars, as does also the other ster, Showalter, of Kentuck not altogether unlike Mark Twain. Tehigonne, the veteran Russian player, is one of the few competitors unaddicted to tobacco. Burn, of Liverpool, has played very steadily and is well in the ranning for one of the smaller prizes, but the other Englishmen, Mason and Mortimer, have not done well.
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Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.