And we've the sun on rock and garden."

gives me, whenever I read it, the feeling that he is in the room,
looking up with his hard, 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 in talk some years before. The reader
must however believe that the words quoted, if not the very words
used by Synge, are as near to the very words as my memory can make
them.

* * * * *

I have been asked to add to these memories a few notes, and the