Page:John M. Synge - Masefield - Dublin 1915.djvu/41

 quick guttural laugh and kindling eyes, from the rolling of a cigarette. The issue of Samhain for December, 1904, contains a portrait of him by Mr. J. B. Yeats. It is difficult to believe that there can be any portrait more like him.

I wrote down these memories in January and February, 1911, two years after Synge’s death, and three and a half years after I had parted from him. They were printed in the Contemporary Review for April, 1911, and are reprinted here through the kindness of the Editor and Proprietors, whom I wish to thank. Four years have passed since I wrote this account, and in reading it over today one or two little things, as the use of particular words in what I quote from him, etc., have made me pause, as possibly inexact. I have not altered these things, because, when I wrote this account, my memory of the events and words was sharper than it is today. Memory is a bad witness, and inexact in very little things, such as the precise words used