He did not fast on purpose, but his long walks through wild country and indigent people inflicted on him much severe deprivation: moreover, as he ate whatever food offered itself,--food unpalatable and often indigestible to him, his whole frame might have vied in emaciation with a monk of La Trappe.
Such a phenomenon intensely excited the poor Romanists, who looked on him as a genuine "saint" of the ancient breed.

The stamp of heaven seemed to them clear in a frame so wasted by austerity, so superior to worldly pomp, and so partaking in all their indigence.

That a dozen such men would have done more to convert all Ireland to Protestantism, than the whole apparatus of the Church Establishment, was ere long my conviction; though I was at first offended by his apparent affectation of a mean exterior.

But I soon understood, that in no other way could he gain equal access to the lower and lowest orders, and that he was moved not by asceticism, nor by ostentation, but by a self-abandonment fruitful of consequences.

He had practically given up all reading except that of the Bible; and no small part of his movement towards me soon took the form of dissuasion from all other voluntary study.
In fact, I had myself more and more concentrated my religious reading on this one book: still, I could not help feeling the value of a cultivated mind.