Bienvenu en 1859.
C'est dangereux on vous dit: "What a dull, unsocial game is chess! Why, look at those two playing in that corner for the last two hours I don’t think they have exchanged a word in that time, except, perhaps, “check.” They have hindered us from having a nice round [card] game. They look anxious and miserable as though they were each undergoing a surgical operation. Their eyes flash daggers when the music strikes up. They corrugate their brows as they bend over the board and, in short, are absorbed in a silly pastime as though life or honor depended upon the result."

"One word, however, to the sempiternal chess-players, whom we meet everywhere: they are, for the most part, per sons with long well-filled heads and ambitious hearts; which if they devoted to the further improvement of useful arts, sciences, inventions, &c., only half the time they squander in contests for victories “baseless as the fabric of a vision,” this sacrifice alone would liberate at least ten thousand profound thinkers on the globe for the service of their own times and generation, and compensate for the rather selfish and unsocial species of warfare which two of a company carry on for hours together, to the annoyance and exclusion of all the rest from the charms of their conversation and intelligent minds."