or sufficiently dangerous to excite the public. Some of the engineering and shipbuilding apprentices and young journeymen in Glasgow and in the Vale of Leven at Dumbarton threw themselves with great energy into football, and developed a special technique in marshalling their forces in the game. The consequences were the formation of numerous football clubs, acute rivalry among these, increasing crowds of spectators, exploitation of the game by means of gate-money, and the gradual transformation of it from a healthy athletic exercise by amateurs to a spectacular contest between professional teams directed by professional captains, by whom the tactics of the game were further developed. Among the professional football players and their critics in the newspapers a new language made its appearance. The journals gave increasing space to sport of all kinds, especially to football, and the leisure of the working population came to be largely devoted to witnessing contests in which an insignificant number took any part, excepting as spectators. In 1873 or 74 I resumed my interest in chess, and in one or other of these years I joined the Glasgow Chess Club. About the same time Zukertort came to Glasgow to play a series of simultaneous blindfold games, and I was asked to call out the moves for him. I think he played twenty-two boards. It was a very marvellous performance. One of the players challenged one of Zukertort's moves. The player had in defiance of all rules been moving about the pieces on his board. Zukertort was not in the least disturbed by the challenge. He repeated the game from the beginning, and then gave the position as it should be. It is needless to say that he was indisputably right and the seeing player wrong. Within this decade also I became acquainted with Blackburne, with Captain MacKenzie, the celebrated American chess player, and more importantly, with Steinitz, with whom I remained on friendly terms until his death. Steinitz was undoubtedly the greatest chess master of his time, and perhaps of any time. He did not distinguish himself beyond the field of chess, but he had other interests. He had either invented or somehow become involved in an invention in marine engineering. This invention consisted in some alleged improvement in the screw-propeller. I got him some information that he wanted from some of my shipbuilding friends, but I do not think his project came to anything. Much more interesting were his philosophical views which he propounded on various occasions. Curiously enough, he regarded his achievements in chess with great modesty; but he really prided himself upon his powers as a philosopher. I cannot say, however, that there was anything original in his philosophy. So far as I could form a judgment, he was a Spinozist. Among his less wellknown writings is a little pamphlet called The Economies of Chess, in which he shows for the benefit of the intending chess professional that chess does not pay. This pamphlet promulgates the thesis which he once developed to me viva voce: "Here am I," he said, "the most successful chess professional of my time, winner of the most important prizes in chess matches and editor of the most important and remunerative chess column" (he edited the chess column of The Field), "and yet, on the average, I have not received more than the wages of an artisan." Sometimes, in the eighties, I used to play with Bird at Simpson's Divan in the Strand, and occasionally Steinitz used to look on and make caustic comments on the game. Of the intimate friends of this period, none held a greater share in my affections than Gerald George Challice. Although he wrote none but fugitive pieces, he had a decided poetic gift and keen critical talent. He translated into vigorous English some of the graceful and fiercely propagandist verse of Louise Ackermann as well as some of the poems of Baudelaire. Among my most loyal and devoted friends also was Donald Cameron, a Highlander from Appin. Cameron was a civil engineer. He afterwards became City Engineer of Exeter, and later went to Vancouver. From Vancouver he sent six sons to the war; one of these was killed in one of the engagements in Flanders. 1 Captain G. G. Challice was at this time (1880) an officer in the Glasgow garrison. He afterwards went to Egypt, and after the Egyptian War to Mauritius. He retired as lieutenant-colonel, and died at Algiers in 1922. CHAPTER VI A PRESBYTERIAN JOB D'ye mind that day, when in a bizz, An' sklented on the man of Uzz, ROBERT BURNS, Address to the Deil (1786). THE Scots, at least from the time of John Knox, have been shrewd theologians. They have, moreover, usually mingled their theology with common-sense, and have a peculiar affection for those passages of Scripture in which this quality is most conspicuous. The Westminster Confession is the universal credo to which appeal may be made. There are many Scots sects, but these are divided rather on questions of Church government than on questions of theology. The divisions of the early nineteenth century—the Auld Licht Burghers and the New Licht Burghers, the Auld Licht Anti-Burghers and the New Licht Anti-Burghers-still subsist under other names, but the divisions are not based on fundamental theological questions, they are all either on questions relating to the interior administration of the Church, or to its relation to the State. If, in an extreme example, a minister elects to pass from the Free to the Established Church, he need change no part of his creed, he need only change his attitude towards the "civil magistrate." One of the friends of my youth was a certain Rev. Peter MHe was a most worthy man, full of the inner light of the Spirit, but rather lacking in intellectual force as well as in the social graces. Nature had clearly designed him for tillage, but instruction and ambition made him a "probationer." After a long struggle in this ambiguous rôle, in which a man is neither lay nor cleric, the Rev. Peter achieved a church. The church was in a mining district; but neither the mines nor the church experienced the benefits of war prices for coal, and both remained in a depressed condition. I remember 1 A probationer is licensed by the Presbytery to preach; but he does not have charge of a congregation until he is "called" to one and "inducted." hearing the Rev. Peter discourse to a slender congregation under the dismal influence of candle-light, for the church was not equipped with the convenience of gas although that illuminant had been invented about seventy years before by an intelligent gentleman called Murdoch at no great distance from the site of the church. The worthy Peter had done his utmost to keep the "ordinances" going; he had remained a bachelor; he had lived on an income less than the minimum of the "sustentation fund." He had struggled hard, without success, to get his charge placed upon it. He had even given of his own slender means to keep his church going. These circumstances rendered it necessary for him to economise beyond the dreams of a Food Controller. For weeks at a time he lived upon "crowdy." I do not suppose that many persons in this luxurious age know what "crowdy" is. I may therefore explain that when a Scotsman is very poor he lives, or lived, exclusively upon porridge; but the making of porridge, or even of "brose," 2 requires fuel. In every deep there is lower depth. A Scotsman without meal is a dead Scotsman; but if he has meal and cold water he can live without fuel, because he can mingle his meal and cold water, and thus make "crowdy." Such a diet, if not varied, is nourishing. Peter adopted it; and he not merely subsisted on it, he wrote poetry, not about it, but on it. While he was thus gallantly mortifying the flesh, for Peter loved good cheer as much as anybody, he read to me long passages from an epic in the style of Paradise Lost. So far as I recall, Peter avoided direct competition with Milton by passing lightly over "man's first disobedience" and really began his epic by plunging into the Flood. His knowledge of human nature, especially on its sordid ecclesiastical side, was of great assistance to him in understanding the kings and prophets of Israel when he came to deal with them, and the vituperative dialectic of which he was a really masterly exponent in the Presbytery at its monthly meetings enabled him to explain to others, either in his poem or in his pulpit, the shortcomings even of the saints. For years I retained in my mind some of the lines of Peter's epic. I doubt if they would readily be accepted as poetry even by a very partial literary judgment. These lines have, however, wholly faded from my memory, and I fear that the poem, as a whole, has crumbled into dust unless the manuscript has been preserved as an heirloom by some of Peter's kindred. " 1 The "sustentation fund is accumulated by general collections, gifts and bequests, and the income of it is divided among those charges which are on its list. Many of the newer and smaller charges derive no benefit from it. There is, therefore, on their part often a struggle to be placed on this list. 2 Porridge is boiled meal; "brose" is meal upon which hot water is poured. In the course of time, the Rev. Peter left his mining charge in the suburbs and came into town, where a brand-new church raised by Peter's self-sacrificing devotion seemed to crown his patient career. I went to the inaugural service of this edifice with a distant relative who admired Peter's pluck and had given him a good subscription. Unfortunately, neither sound theology nor poetic temperament nor capacity of living on "crowdy" availed; the town public did not appreciate Peter, and even "crowdy," the irreducible minimum of subsistence, became difficult to procure. Probably Peter's want of success and his descent from temporary eminence were facilitated by the hostility of members of his Presbytery who somehow were not among his admirers. Peter had certainly a provoking way with him. Secure in his capacity of living upon "crowdy," while his opponents probably drew the line at "minced meat," he protested against everything in which he did not believe, no matter how injurious his protests might be to his material interests. These material interests were so small that they could not be diminished without extinction. Eventually Peter protested too much, and extinction came. Even "crowdy" was impossible to obtain. Peter did not believe in the maxim of Voltaire, whose very name was anathema to him, "Il n'y a pas d'homme nécessaire." On the contrary, Peter knew that in a corrupt age he was the necessary man. In other words, the instinct of self-preservation asserted itself. He could not dig, to beg he was ashamed, and so he resolved to go over to the Establishment. In thus resolving, Peter did no violence to any article of his faith, he merely abjured an opinion which he found untenable, viz., that the "civil magistrate" is not the head of the Church. He came to realise that the Church was, in one of its aspects, a group of professional persons whose maintenance was necessary in the general scheme of social things, and therefore that maintenance came within the duty of the "civil magistrate." The Established Church of Scotland was at that time somewhat in a decline. The popular preachers were either Frees or United Presbyterians. The theologians were all Frees, as were also most of the heretics, of whom there were not many. The Rev. Peter, though not an intellectual figure, was nevertheless a theologian. From the point of view of ecclesiastical politics, it might have been well to have kept Peter as a distracting influence within the fold of the Free Church, so that he might continue to be a thorn in the side of his Presbytery and an example of the manner in which the "voluntary system," in spite of the repudiation of it by the Free Church, worked out in |