A VILLAGE OF CHESS-PLAYERS.
We learn from a foreign journal that the village of Stroebeck is known throughout the whole of Germany as the "chess-playing village." For centuries every native of that village, from the prosperous freeholder down to the poor shepherd, has been an enthusiastic and a more or less efficient chess-player.
From time immemorial the knowledge and love of the game have been handed down from one generation to another, and parents are still in the habit of teaching it to their children as soon almost as they are able to walk. It is one of the regular subjects taught at the village school.
Once a year, at Easter, the children's knowledge of the game is tested by a kind of examination conducted by an examining committee of peasants, of which the clergyman is the president and the school-master the vice-president. Forty-eight of the scholars are selected by lot, and matched against each other by a similar method. The twenty-four winners in the series of single combats then enter upon a second struggle among themselves, and the remaining twelve on the third. The six winners in the threefold contest are declared the champion players of the school. They each receive a prize, consisting of a chess-board and chessmen, and are escorted home by their parents and friends after the manner of the Olympian victors among the ancient Greeks. Afterwards a feast is given in their honor to which all the friends and relations are invited.