Cockie is a first-rate chess player, at least so he has repeatedly informed us. He knows the whole history of Ruy Lopez even to his private affairs, and can at any stage of any game tell you the exact measurement of the sphere for evil of any piece on the board. He does not finger his piece and wave it in mid-air before moving as do smaller fry at the game. Neither does he hesitate for four minutes ever. Attacks, counter-attacks, demonstrations, feints, holding and flanking--he is an artist at them all. At every exchange he gets an advantage in pieces--_or position_. "Position," he assures us, "is the all in all." He can even nominate the moves without looking at the board. In short, if he did not invariably get beaten, he would be a perfect player, and even Lasker would have to look out. Square-Peg once brilliantly remarked that this tendency to get beaten was the tragedy of it all, but with infinitely more tact, at least to my mind, I added that Cockie was merely a great player and not infallible; in other words, that there were limitations in us all. This Cockie said he denied. And I agreed. That may seem illogical. But it was necessary. If to beat Cockie is a misdemeanour, then to allude to the fact is certainly a crime--in his eyes. Besides, he isn't invariably beaten, as I have said. That was a mis-statement. For when he has made a bad slip or, let us say, paid too big a price for "position," such as losing his queen for a bishop or maybe a pawn, he frequently goes very red in the face and knocks all the pieces from the board on to the floor, which shows he has the foreseeing eye, a faculty absolutely necessary to a first-rate chess player. Maeterlinck, we are told, has the seeing eye. How much greater, then, is Cockie, who has the foreseeing eye? If, thinks Cockie, it is not always the province of man to anticipate disaster, he can at least forestall it. "I had the game on my head," Cockie usually bursts out as he sweeps the board. "And it wasn't lost either, don't forget--but the interest in it had all gone." He did the same the first time he played me when he showed me a new opening--about three moves. He got a piece or two ahead, when after an hour or so I evened things up. Then he made his invariable slip, and before one could strike a match Cockie had the board clean as a skating rink, remarking hotly, "When I play against myself I'm always beaten." "Thank your God, Cockie," I retorted, "then you admit some one can beat you." Which remark somehow or other he didn't appreciate. However, since then I'm more awake, and when, which is not often, I bag his queen, or when, which is very often, he makes a slip, my arms are around the board before you could smile. It's the only way to keep the men on. If we were in America I should practise "getting the drop on him with a Colt's revolver" at each crisis. Poor Square-Peg came to me in trouble on this point the other day.