ideals.

In the Temple John had made many acquaintances and friends, and about
him were found the contributors to the _Pilgrim_, a weekly newspaper
devoted to young men, their doings, their amusements, their
literature, and their art. The editor and proprietor of this organ
of amusement was Escott. His editorial work was principally done in
his chambers in Temple Gardens, where he lived with his friend, Mike
Fletcher. Of necessity the newspaper drew, like gravitation, art
and literature, but the revelling lords who assembled there were
a disintegrating influence, and made John Norton a sort of second
centre; and Harding and Thompson and others of various temperaments
and talents found their way to Pump Court. Like cuckoos, some men are
only really at home in the homes of others; others are always ill at
ease when taken out of the surroundings which they have composed to
their ideas and requirements; and John Norton was never really John
Norton except when, wrapped in his long dressing-gown and sitting in
his high canonical chair, he listened to Harding's paradoxes or
Thompson's sententious utterances. These artistic discussions--when
in the passion of the moment, all the cares of life were lost and
the soul battled in pure idea--were full of attraction and charm
for John, and he often thought he had never been so happy. And then
Harding's eyes would brighten, and his intelligence, eager as a wolf
prowling for food, ran to and fro, seeking and sniffing in all John's
interests and enthusiasms. He was at once fascinated by the scheme
for the pessimistic poem and charmed with the projected voyage in
Thibet and the book on the Great Lamas.

One evening a discussion arose as to whether Goethe had stolen from
Schopenhauer, or Schopenhauer from Goethe, the comparison of man's