The Sirdar's Chess-Board
Mrs E W Latimer
Genre: | Short Fiction, Travelogue |
Relevant illustrations: | eng. [2] |
Subjects: | Mathematics, Gender, Amusement, Mesmerism |
The female narrator, Sophy Effingham, follows her military husband to central Afghanistan, and whilst there she amazes the Sirdar and his attendants by her ability to cut a chess-board of sixty-four squares 'with three snips of my scissors, in place of eight times eight squares' so that it 'lay before the Sirdar five times thirteen, sixty-five squares in all' [accompanying diagrams show how the geometric feat might be achieved] (369). Later, when the Sirdar laughs, she reflects that 'a mesmeric perception of his thought flashed into me like a stroke of electricity' (370). |
© Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Project, Universities of Leeds and Sheffield, 2005 - 2020
Printed from Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical: An Electronic Index, v. 4.0, The Digital Humanities Institute <http://www.sciper.org> [accessed ]