The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls | Page 7

grand cleaning of the apartment I remember all the furniture was
ranged on a circular grass plot between the churchyard and the house. It
was a lovely still summer evening, and I stayed out, climbing among
the chairs and sofas. Falling on a large bone or skull, I asked what it
was. Part of an albatross, auntie told me. 'What is an albatross?' I asked,
and then she described to me this great bird nearly as big as a house,
that you saw out miles away from any land, sleeping above the vast and
desolate ocean. She told me that the Ancient Mariner was all about one;
and quoted with great verve (she had a duster in her hand, I recollect)--
'With my crossbow I shot the albatross.'

... Willie had a crossbow, but up to this date I had never envied him its
possession. After this, however, it became one of the objects of my
life."
With many playmates, free to roam and romp as he chose, his illness
forgotten, it is no wonder he says he felt as if he led two lives, one
belonging to Edinburgh and one to the country, and that Colinton ever
remained an enchanted spot to which it was always hard to say
good-by.
CHAPTER III
THE LANTERN BEARER
"Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, untaught In school, some
graduate of the field or street, Who shall become a master of the art, An
admiral sailing the high seas of thought, Fearless and first, and steering
with his fleet For lands not yet laid down on any chart."
--LONGFELLOW.
School days began for Louis in 1859, but were continually interrupted
by illness, travel, and change of school. His father did not believe in
forcing him to study; so he roamed through school according to his
own sweet will, attending classes where he cared to, interesting himself
in the subjects that appealed to him--Latin, French, and
mathematics--neglecting the others and bringing home no prizes, to
Cummie's distress.
Certain books were his prime favorites at this time. "Robinson Crusoe,"
he says, "and some of the books of Mayne Reid and a book called Paul
Blake--Swiss Family Robinson also. At these I played, conjured up
their scenes and delighted to hear them rehearsed to seventy times
seven.
"My father's library was a spot of some austerity; the proceedings of
learned societies, cyclopædias, physical science and above all, optics
held the chief place upon the shelves, and it was only in holes and

corners that anything legible existed as if by accident. Parents'
Assistant, Rob Roy, Waverley and Guy Mannering, Pilgrim's Progress,
Voyages of Capt. Woods Rogers, Ainsworth's Tower of London and
four old volumes of Punch--these were among the chief exceptions.
"In these latter which made for years the chief of my diet, I very early
fell in love (almost as soon as I could spell) with the Snob Papers. I
knew them almost by heart ... and I remember my surprise when I
found long afterward that they were famous, and signed with a famous
name; to me, as I read and admired them, they were the works of Mr.
Punch."
Two old Bibles interested him particularly. They had belonged to his
grandfather Stevenson and contained many marked passages and notes
telling how they had been read aboard lighthouse tenders and on tours
of inspection among the islands.
After he was thirteen his health was greatly improved and he was able
to enjoy the comradeship of other lads, though he never cared greatly
for sports. He was the leader of a number of boys who used to go about
playing tricks on the neighbors--"tapping on their windows after
nightfall, and all manner of wild freaks."
"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
needful one too; for as it was the rule to keep our glory contained,