One player is blindfolded and stands in the center. The other players sit in chairs in a circle around him. It is advisable to have the circle rather large. The players are numbered consecutively from one to the highest number playing.
The game may start with the players sitting in consecutive order, or they may change places at the outset to confuse the blindfold player, although the changing of places takes place very rapidly in the course of the game. The blindfold player calls out two numbers, whereupon the players bearing those numbers must exchange places, the blindfold player trying meanwhile either to catch one of the players or to secure one of the chairs. Any player so caught must yield his chair to the catcher. No player may go outside of the circle of chairs, but any other tactics may be resorted to for evading capture, such as stooping, creeping, dashing suddenly, etc.
This game may be one of the merriest possible games for an informal house party. The writer recalls one such occasion when a prominent manufacturer was blindfolded and had located two players whose numbers he called for exchange, one of them a newly graduated West Point lieutenant, the other a college senior. The business man stood in front of the chair occupied by the lieutenant and close to it, taking a crouching attitude, with his feet wide apart and arms outspread ready to grasp the victim when he should emerge from his chair. Noiselessly the lieutenant raised himself to a standing position in his chair, and then suddenly, to shouts of laughter from the company, vaulted over the head of his would-be captor, while at the same moment the collegian crawled between his feet and took possession of the chair.
Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium by Jessie Hubbell Bancroft