Page:John M. Synge - Masefield - Dublin 1915.djvu/45

 to entertain nor to give away, no desire to make nor to own money, no taste for collection nor zest for spending. He eschewed all things that threatened his complete frugal independence and thereby the integrity of his mind.

The superficial man, not seeing this last point, sometimes felt that he “did not know how to abound.”

When in Paris in 1899, he met Mr. W. B. Yeats who, having seen his work suggested that he would do well to give up writing criticism, and go again to the Aran Islands to study the life there, and fill his mind with real and new images ,so that, if he wrote later, his writing might be lively and fresh and his subject a new discovery. He did as Mr. Yeats suggested and went back to the Aran Islands and passed some weeks in Inishmaan. In all, he made five or six visits to the Aran Islands, these two of 1898 and 1899, and certainly three more in the autumns of 1900, 1901, 1902. The Islanders liked him but were a little puzzled by him. He was