Before the 11th ult., the date fixed for the commencement of the match the Special Committee of the Manhattan Chess Club, consisting of Mr. George T. Green, President, and Messrs. F. M. Teed and W. M. De Visser, had completed all arrangements for the contest with painstaking attention to details. Thousands of copies had been distributed in New York and all over the country of a well-compiled program, containing the conditions of the match, a chronological record of the previous performances of both players, Chess Reminiscences of Morphy, by W. J. A. Fuller, besides miscellaneous interesting items of Chess history and biography, which were chiefly contributed by Mr. Frere. Near the front window of the large hall of Cartiers's Academy, No. 80 Fifth Avenue, a well-sized platform had been fitted up on which the players and their Umpires were to be seated and could be easily seen from all parts of the room. An ingeniously constructed Chess board of four feet square was placed on a mantel-piece in the center of the wall for the purpose of illustrating the progress of the game. In the middle of each square a hole had been bored into which chessmen of corresponding size, which had been cut out of thin board wood, could be inserted by means of a peg attached to them, so as to appear flat on the Chess board like the pieces on a diagram. We understand that this novel board and men were made after a plan devised by the President of the Manhattan Chess Club, Mr. George T. Green.
The two players appeared punctually at two o'clock on Monday, the 11th ult., before a large number of spectators, which rapidly increased to a crowd in the course of the afternoon, and included some ladies us well as several Chess enthusiasts from distant cities, who had specially traveled to New York for the purpose of witnessing the match. Conspicuous among the latter were Mr. D. M. Martinez, the President of the Franklin Chess Club of Philadelphia, to whom a seat of honor was assigned near the players, M. J. Redding of San Francisco, Mr. K. Shipley of Philadelphia, Mr. Osborne of Ansonia, and Mr. Martinez, Jr.
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