er you arrive,
owing to the ferry-pilots' strike. You don't get it unpacked down as far
as the layer in which the book is until you have been there a week.

Then the book is taken out and put on the table. In transit it has tried
to eat its way through a pair of tramping-boots, with the result that
one corner and the first twenty pages have become dog-eared, but that
won't interfere with its being read.

Several other things do interfere, however. The nice weather, for
instance. You start out from your room in the morning and somehow or
other never get back to it except when you are in a hurry to get ready
for meals or for bed. You try to read in bed one night, but you can't
seem to fix your sun-burned shoulders in a comfortable position.

You take the book down to luncheon and leave it at the table. And you
don't miss it for three days. When you find it again it has large
blisters on page 35 where some water was dropped on it.

Then Mrs. Beatty, who lives in Montclair in the winter time (no matter
where you go for the summer, you always meet some people who live in
Montclair in the winter), borrows the book, as she has heard so much
about it. Two weeks later she brings it back, and explains that Prince
got hold of it one afternoon and chewed just a little of the back off,
but says that she doesn't think it will be noticed when the book is in
the bookcase.

Back to the table in the bedroom it goes and is used to keep unanswered
post-cards in. It also is convenient as a backing for cards which you
yourself are writing. And the flyleaf makes an excellent place for a
bridge-score if there isn't any other paper handy.

When it comes time to pack up for home, you shake the sand from among
the leaves and save out the book to be read on the train. And you leave
it in the automobile that takes you to the station.

But for all that, "take along a book." It might rain all summer.

XXXVII

CONFESSIONS OF A CHESS CHAMPION

With the opening of the baseball season, the sporting urge stirs in
one's blood and we turn to such books as "My Chess Career," by J.R.
Capablanca. Mr. Capablanca, I gather from his text, plays chess very
well. Wherein he unquestionably has something on me.

His book is a combination of autobiography and pictorial examples of
difficult games he has participated in and won. I could understand the
autobiographical part perfectly, but although I have seen chess diagrams
in the evening papers for