he does not seem to have proceeded very far.
When he was at Bournemouth in 1886, he tells Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin that "I
write all the morning, come down, and never leave the piano till five;
write letters, dine, get down again about eight, and never leave the piano
until I go to bed." At this time the whistle was Osborne's instrument.
"You should hear Lloyd on the penny whistle and me on the piano!"
Stevenson exclaimed to his father, "Dear powers, what a concerto! I now
live entirely for the piano; he for the whistle; the neighbors in a
radius of a furlong and a half are packing up in quest of better climes."
By his own confession, it was a case of picking out the melody with one
finger! In the matter of musical arrangements he proclaims himself a
purist, and yet, with charming inconsistency, announces that he is
arranging certain numbers of the "Magic Flute" for "two melodious
forefingers." Clearly, it does not say much for Mr. Henley's powers as a
virtuoso that Stevenson should have "counterfeited his playing on the
piano."

But Stevenson's particular instrument was the flageolet, the same that
Johnson once bought. Miss Simpson says that his flageolet-playing was
merely one of his impulsive whims, an experiment undertaken to see if he
liked making music. However this may have been, there can be no doubt
about his assiduity in practice; indeed, the earlier Vailima letters are
full of references which show his devotion to the now somewhat despised
instrument. "Played on my pipe," "took to tootling on the flageolet," are
entries which constantly occur, the context always making it clear that
"pipe" is synonymous with flageolet. "If I take to my pipe," he writes on
one occasion, "I know myself all is over for the morning." Writing to Mr.
Colvin in June, 1891, he says:--"Tell Mrs. S. I have been playing 'Le
Chant d'Amour' lately, and have arranged it, after awful trouble, rather
prettily for two pipes; and it brought her before me with an effect scarce
short of hallucination. I could hear her voice in every note; yet I had
forgot the air entirely, and began to pipe it from notes as something new,
when I was brought up with a round turn by this reminiscence." Generally
speaking, Stevenson "tootled" by himself; but now and again he took part
in concerted music with Osborne and Mrs. Strong. One day he makes music
"furiously" with these two. A day or two later he writes:--"Woke at the
usual time, very little work, for I was tir