years, I never have been able to become
nervous over one. It has always seemed to me that when you have seen one
diagram of a chessboard you have seen them all. Therefore, I can give
only a superficial review of the technical parts of Mr. Capablanca's
book.

* * * * *

His personal reminiscences, however, are full of poignant episodes. For
instance, let us take an incident which occurred in his early boyhood
when he found out what sort of man his father really was--a sombre event
in the life of any boy, much more so for the boy Capablanca.

"I was born in Havana, the capital of the Island of Cuba," he says, "the
19th of November, 1888. I was not yet five years old when by accident I
came into my father's private office and found him playing with another
gentleman. I had never seen a game of chess before; the pieces
interested me and I went the next day to see them play again. The third
day, as I looked on, my father, a very poor beginner, moved a Knight
from a white square to another white square. His opponent, apparently
not a better player, did not notice it. My father won, and I proceeded
to call him a cheat and to laugh."

Imagine the feelings of a young boy entering his father's private office
and seeing a man whom he had been brought up to love and to revere
moving a Knight from one white square to another. It is a wonder that
the boy had the courage to grow up at all with a start in life like
that.

But he did grow up, and at the age of eight, in spite of the advice of
doctors, he was a frequent visitor at the Havana Chess Club. As he says
in describing this period of his career, "Soon Don Celso Golmayo, the
strongest player there, was unable to give me a rook." So you can see
how good he was. Don Celso couldn't give him a rook. And if Don Celso
couldn't, who on earth could?

In his introduction, Mr. Capablanca (I wish that I could get it out of
my head that Mr. Capablanca is possibly a relation of the Casablanca boy
who did the right thing by the burning deck. They are, of course, two
entirely different people)--in his introduction, Mr. Capablanca says:

"Conceit I consider a foolish thing; but more foolish still is that
false modesty that vainly attempts to conceal that which all facts tend
to prove."

It is this straining to overcome a foolish, false modesty which leads
him to say, in connection with his matches with members of the Manhattan
Chess Club. "As one by one