The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls

Back Forward Menu

"Crusoing" was a favorite game and its name stood for all picnicking in
the open air, building bonfires and cooking apples, but the crowning
sport of all was "Lantern Bearing," a game invented by himself and
shared by a dozen of his cronies.

"Toward the end of September," he says, "when school time was drawing
near and the nights were already black, we would begin to sally from
our respective villas, each equipped with a tin bull's-eye lantern....
We wore them buckled to the waist upon a cricket belt, and over them,
such was the rigor of the game, a buttoned top-coat. They smelled
noxiously of blistered tin; they never burned aright, though they would
always burn our fingers; their use was naught; the pleasure of them
merely fanciful; and yet a boy with a bull's-eye under his top-coat
asked for nothing more.

"When two of these asses met there would be an anxious, 'Have you your
lantern?' and a gratified 'Yes,' That was the shibboleth, and a very