Joyce was at once dependant upon the real and superior to it. His attitude may be elicited from a story he once told his French academician friend, Louis Clillet. It was about an old Basket Islander who had lived on his island from birth, and knew nothing about the mainland and its ways. But on one occasion he did venture over, and in a bazaar found a small mirror, something he had never seen in his life. He bought it, fondled it, gazed at it, and as he rode back to the Baskets, he took it out of his pocket, stared at it some more, and murmured, "Oh Papa! Papa!" He jealously guarded the precious object from his wife's eyes, but she observed that he was hiding something and became suspicious. One hot day, when both were at work in the fields, he hung his jacket on a hedge. She saw her chance, rushed to it, and extracted from the pocket the object which her husband had kept so secret. But when she looked at the mirror, she cried, "Ach, it's nothing but an old woman!" and angrily threw it down so that it broke against a stone.
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