Wherever I went, I cut a piece of a branch from a tree—these constituted what I called my log-book; and I intended to have a set of chessmen out of them, each having reference to the place where it was cut—as the kings from Falkland and Holy Rood; the queens from Queen Mary’s yew-tree at Crookston; the bishops from abbeys or Episcopal palaces; the knights from baronial residences; the rooks from royal fortresses; and the pawns generally from places worthy of historical note.
Do you suppose he ever did it?
Now I had had the “collecting craze” for years, just as most boys and girls have now; and wherever I had been, had secured something, till a most miscellaneous accumulation was packed away in boxes and drawers about the house. Moreover, the rest of the children, as they grew up, had been possessed with the same idea. The boy who went South had obtained specimens of different kinds of woods; the one who was in the army had picked up relics; the girl who went to the White Mountains, and afterwards to Ticonderoga, had gathered mosses, leaves, and wild flowers.
Besides, all of us who had a duplicate or a bit to spare, had exchanged with some of our friends, just as you are all doing. The thing is in the air. Boys are boys, and girls are girls, everywhere; and fashions repeat themselves, and are passed on. You are doing what we did before you; and by and by, others will do as you are doing.
The result was that we had a little of everything, and a great deal, a very great deal all told; and when spring house-cleaning came around, and as in all proper households, every closet and drawer, bag and bundle was turned inside out, our mother would say: “Why don’t you make something out of these things? Seems to me if I couldn’t, I’d give them to somebody who would.”
There was the trouble—we meant to; forever meaning to do something; but that class, whether old or young, does not usually accomplish much.
But let me tell you of things that have been done—by whom it does not matter. One boy started up on Sir Walter’s plan, and set the example for his comrades (besides correspondents); so that presently hand-books on chess made their appearance in the neighborhood; and there began to be a great deal of turning on lathes, and fine sawing, and whittling, and sand-papering. Pretty soon chess was all the talk; and as that game is one which requires in Wordsworth’s line (written on an altogether different subject)
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill,
(the strength being strength of purpose) also a good head for planning, and a memory, it turned out that the chessmen fancy proved a good thing. Nothing outside of good, hard, school studies can better discipline some of the faculties than that game. It is indeed no light accomplishment to play even tolerably well. Besides, when those boys were absorbed in chess, their fathers and mothers did not have to worry about them when they were away in the evening.
One set had historic associations almost the next best thing to Sir Walter’s. Think of the king being made of a piece of wood from Mount Vernon; a castle (or rook) of a piece from Fort Ticonderoga (we have forts, or ruins of forts, enough); a knight from a piece of John Brown’s scaffold; and the pawns from a peach-tree that grew from a stone a soldier had thrown away on a Virginia battlefield.