With eight moves to
make in about as many minutes in his excitement he had apparently
unwillingly climbed the back of a chair and not till he had
completed the requisite number within the hour and began to breathe
freely did he seem conscious of where he was. Though anxious
for a moment or so he succeeded in getting down very cleverly
without mishap, not however escaping some signs of trepidation.
A St. Louis writer in 1886, after one of his games with Zukertort,
described in true American fashion Steinitz's tall chair and short
legs and his frantic efforts to regain terra firma, as the writer
described it, to reach the American hemisphere. Steinitz's high
appreciation of proficiency in the game and what is due to one
who attains it was once illustrated before a great man at Vienna,
who rebuked him for humming whilst playing at chess, saying,
"Don't you know that I am the great Banker?" The reply was
characteristic of Steinitz. "And don't you know that I am the
Rothschild of chess?"
A beautiful chess position with Steinitz beats any work of art
as Al Solis chess, in the opinion of the Caliph, one thousand years
ago far excelled the flowers in his most beautiful garden and
everything that was in it.
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