The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls

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war took weeks to play, and the critical operations in the attic
monopolized half our thoughts. This attic was a most chilly and dismal
spot, reached by a crazy ladder, and unlit save for a single frosted
window; so low at the eaves and so dark that we could seldom stand
upright, nor see without a candle. Upon the attic floor a map was
roughly drawn in chalks of different colors, with mountains, rivers,
towns, bridges, and roads of two classes. Here we would play by the
hour, with tingling fingers and stiffening knees, and an intentness,
zest, and excitement that I shall never forget.

"The mimic battalions marched and counter-marched, changed by measured
evolutions from column formation into line, with cavalry screens in
front and massed support behind, in the most approved military fashion
of to-day."

Neither of them ever grew too old for this sport. Year after year they
went back to the game. Even when they went to Samoa they laid out a