The shots he misses when people are looking on would
give you a wrong idea of him. When nobody is about, a prettier game
you do not often see. If some folks who fancy themselves could see
me when there is nobody about, it might take the conceit out of them.
Only once I played up to what I feel is my real form, and then it led
to argument. I was staying at an hotel in Switzerland, and the
second evening a pleasant-spoken young fellow, who said he had read
all my books--later, he appeared surprised on learning I had written
more than two--asked me if I would care to play a hundred up. We
played even, and I paid for the table. The next evening he said he
thought it would make a better game if he gave me forty and I broke.
It was a fairly close finish, and afterwards he suggested that I
should put down my name for the handicap they were arranging.
"I am afraid," I answered, "that I hardly play well enough. Just a
quiet game with you is one thing; but in a handicap with a crowd
looking on--"
"I should not let that trouble you," he said; "there are some here
who play worse than you--just one or two. It passes the evening."
It was merely a friendly affair. I paid my twenty marks, and was
given plus a hundred. I drew for my first game a chatty type of man,
who started minus twenty. We neither of us did much for the first
five minutes, and then I made a break of forty-four.
There was not a fluke in it from beginning to end.
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